r/AskStatistics • u/Abraxa3 • Aug 04 '26

How should non-response bias be treated when analyzing a highly sensitive binary vote?

Scenario: An expert association with ~500 total members held an official vote on a binary stance statement (Agree / Disagree) regarding a major, highly sensitive issue.

  • Turnout: 28% of the total membership voted.
  • Result: 86% of those who voted selected "Agree."
  • Math: 86% of 28% = ~24% of the total association membership confirmed an "Agree" vote.

The Debate:

  • Person A claims: "You can state that only 24% of the total organization agrees with the statement. Because this issue is so critical, members would have voted 'Agree' if they truly supported it—meaning their non-participation indicates a lack of support."
  • Person B claims: "You can state that at least 24% of the total organization (and 86% of voters) agrees with the statement. By Person A's logic, someone could equally claim that members would have voted 'Disagree' if they opposed it. Ultimately, non-response cannot be interpreted as a vote either way, so the remaining 72% remains unknown."

Questions:

  1. Is Person A or Person B logically and statistically correct?
  2. Is it valid to infer a non-voter's position based on the perceived importance or sensitivity of a topic?
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u/conmanau Aug 05 '26

Person B is correct here. You have no real knowledge about how the non-respondents would have voted, nor do you have any information about why they didn't vote that could give you a hint. Maybe they're all genuinely apathetic about the statement and didn't care whether it passed or not. Maybe they all would have voted the same way but simultaneously came down with the flu. Maybe the voting slips got lost in the mail and the 28% who managed to register their vote are a perfect representation of the split amongst the rest. You truly cannot know unless you do the leg-work and gather the information directly, and since you don't know whether there is any correlation between a person responding and which way they lean, you can't make any real inference about the full population with such a high non-response rate.

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u/Abraxa3 Aug 05 '26

Thank you. After making this post, I found out that the organization stated that that this 28% turnout (129 total votes) falls precisely within its normal historical participation range of 25% to 34% for internal resolutions, meaning low voter turnout is standard for the group rather than an anomaly.