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The chancellor model: forecasting German elections
[journal article]
Abstract "Our forecast model for German Bundestag elections relies on three predictors: (1) the popularity of the incumbent chancellor (hence the christening of it as the 'Chancellor Model'); (2) the long-term partisan balance in the German electorate; and (3) the cost of ruling, as captured by the tenure of... view more
"Our forecast model for German Bundestag elections relies on three predictors: (1) the popularity of the incumbent chancellor (hence the christening of it as the 'Chancellor Model'); (2) the long-term partisan balance in the German electorate; and (3) the cost of ruling, as captured by the tenure of the government in office. The model forecasts the vote share of the governing parties (typically two, such as Social Democrats and Greens, or Christian Democrats and Free Democrats), except for instances of a grand coalition. The coefficients of the predictors are estimated based on elections since 1949, the beginning of the Federal Republic. The out-of-sample forecasts of the model deviate from the actual results by just over one percentage point, on average. The first real-time test of the model came in 2002. The forecast issued three months before Election Day picked the incumbent vote share to the decimal (47.1% for the SPD-Greens coalition); for the 2005 election, called a year early, our forecast three
weeks before Election Day was just three-tenths of a percentage off the mark. For the upcoming election, we offer separate forecasts, conditional at this moment, for each of the two parties in the grand coalition." (authors abstract)... view less
Keywords
prognosis; popularity; voting behavior; election; election to the Bundestag; Federal Republic of Germany; election result; predictive model; Federal Chancellor
Classification
Political Process, Elections, Political Sociology, Political Culture
Free Keywords
election forecasting; government popularity; German elections; multivariate models
Document language
English
Publication Year
2010
Page/Pages
42–53 p.
Journal
International Journal of Forecasting, 26 (2010) 1
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijforecast.2009.02.008
Licence
Deposit Licence - No Redistribution, No Modifications
Data providerThis metadata entry was indexed by the Special Subject Collection Social Sciences, USB Cologne