Estimating Parliamentary composition through electoral polls

Frederic Udina () and Pedro Delicado

Journal Of The Royal Statistical Society Series A, 2005, vol. 168, issue 2, pages 387-399

Abstract: All electoral systems have an "electoral formula" that converts proportions of votes into Parliamentary seats. Pre-electoral polls usually focus on estimating proportions of votes and then apply the electoral formula to give a forecast of Parliamentary composition. We describe the problems that arise from this approach: there will typically be a bias in the forecast. We study the origin of the bias and some methods for evaluating and reducing it. We propose a bootstrap algorithm for computing confidence intervals for the allocation of seats. We show, by Monte Carlo simulation, the performance of the proposed methods using data from Spanish elections in previous years. We also propose graphical methods for visualizing how electoral formulae and Parliamentary forecasts work (or fail). Copyright 2005 Royal Statistical Society.

Date: 2005

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-985X.2005.00354.x link to full text (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: Estimating Parliamentary Composition through Electoral Polls (2001)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:jorssa:v:168:y:2005:i:2:p:387-399

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=0964-1998

Access Statistics for this article

Journal Of The Royal Statistical Society Series A is edited by A. Fielding and G. Verbeke

More articles in Journal Of The Royal Statistical Society Series A from Royal Statistical Society
Series data maintained by Christopher F. Baum ().