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Forecasting elections in Europe: Synthetic models
Journal article   Open access   Peer reviewed

Forecasting elections in Europe: Synthetic models

Michael S Lewis-Beck and Ruth Dassonneville
Research & politics, Vol.2(1), pp.205316801456512-11
03/27/2015
DOI: 10.1177/2053168014565128
url
https://doi.org/10.1177/2053168014565128View
Published (Version of record) Open Access

Abstract

Scientific work on national election forecasting has become most developed for the United States case, where three dominant approaches can be identified: Structuralists, Aggregators, and Synthesizers. For European cases, election forecasting models remain almost exclusively Structuralist. Here we join together structural modeling and aggregate polling results, to form a hybrid, which we label a Synthetic Model. This model contains a political economy core, to which poll numbers are added (to tap omitted variables). We apply this model to a sample of three Western European countries: Germany, Ireland, and the United Kingdom. This combinatory strategy appears to offer clear forecasting gains, in terms of lead and accuracy.

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