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Are election results more unpredictable? A forecasting test

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 May 2019

Richard Nadeau ,
Ruth Dassonneville ,
Michael S. Lewis-Beck  and
Philippe Mongrain
Richard Nadeau
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, Université de Montréal, Pavillon Lionel-Groulx, 3150, rue Jean-Brillant, Montréal, H3T 1N8, Canada
Ruth Dassonneville*
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, Université de Montréal, Pavillon Lionel-Groulx, 3150, rue Jean-Brillant, Montréal, H3T 1N8, Canada
Michael S. Lewis-Beck
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA52242, United States
Philippe Mongrain
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, Université de Montréal, Pavillon Lionel-Groulx, 3150, rue Jean-Brillant, Montréal, H3T 1N8, Canada
*
*Corresponding author. E-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

Changes in voters' behavior and in the campaign strategies that political parties pursue are likely to have increased the importance of campaigns on voters' electoral choices. As a result, scholars increasingly question the usefulness and predictive power of structural forecasting models, that use information from “fundamental” variables to make an election prediction several months before Election Day. In this paper, we empirically examine the expectation that structural forecasting models are increasingly error-prone. For doing so, we apply a structural forecasting model to predict elections in six established democracies. We then trace the predictive power of this model over time. Surprisingly, our results do not give the slightest indication of a decline in the predictive power of structural forecasting models. By showing that information on long-term factors still allows making accurate predictions of electoral outcomes, we question the assumption that campaigns matter more now than they did in the past.

Keywords

Elections and campaignsvoting behavior
Type
Research Note
Information
Political Science Research and Methods , Volume 8 , Issue 4 , October 2020 , pp. 764 - 771
Copyright
Copyright © The European Political Science Association 2019

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