Electoral Externalities in Federations - Evidence from German Opinion Polls

Xenia Frei, Sebastian Langer, Robert Lehmann and Felix Rösel
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Felix Roesel

No 6375, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

Abstract: Party performance in state and federal elections is highly interdependent. Federal elections impact regional voting dynamics and vice versa (electoral externalities). We quantify the extent of simultaneous electoral externalities between two layers of government. We apply vector autoregressions with predetermined variables to unique opinion poll data for the German state of Berlin and the federal level in Germany. State voting intentions for the state and for the federal parliament are the endogenous variables; the federal election trend is treated as predetermined. Our results suggest that shocks in federal parliament voting intention impact state parliament voting intention, but – as a new finding – to the same extent also vice versa. Externalities account for around 10% to 30% of variation at the other level of government. The effects differ across parties. Electoral externalities are less pronounced for the conservative party, but increase in times of government. The opposite holds true for left-wing parties.

Keywords: elections; opinion polls; time series; party vote shares; federalism (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C32 D72 H77 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-pol and nep-ure
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Related works:
Journal Article: Electoral Externalities in Federations – Evidence from German Opinion Polls (2020)
Working Paper: Electoral Externalities in Federations - Evidence from German Opinion Polls (2017)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ces:ceswps:_6375

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