Growth, Centrism and Semi-Presidentialism: Forecasting the Portuguese General Elections

Luís Aguiar-Conraria () and Pedro C. Magalhães ()
Additional contact information
Pedro C. Magalhães: University of Lisbon, Social Sciences Institute,

No 20/2008, NIPE Working Papers from NIPE - Universidade do Minho

Abstract: Electoral behaviour in recently established democracies has been more frequently treated from the point of view of its unpredictability, volatility and personalistic elements than that of its "fundamentals". In this paper, we wish to contribute to redress this imbalance by advancing a forecasting model for general elections in a young democracy, Portugal. Building on the very familiar notion that the vote for the incumbent can be predicted on the basis of "economics" and "politics", we capture "economics" through a nonlinear specification of economic growth. Furthermore, we include two structural features of Portuguese politics, which have entailed a systematic electoral punishment for the centre-left Socialist Party as the incumbent and for all incumbents involved in political conflicts with the elected president in Portugal's semi-presidentialism.

Keywords: Forecasting; Portuguese general elections; Economics and elections; Semi-Presidentialism (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-for and nep-pol
Date: 2008
View list of references

Downloads: (external link)
http://www3.eeg.uminho.pt/economia/nipe/docs/2008/NIPE_WP_20_2008.PDF (application/pdf)

Related works:
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:nip:nipewp:20/2008

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NIPE Working Papers from NIPE - Universidade do Minho
Address: Núcleo de Investigação em Políticas Económicas, Escola de Economia e Gestão, Universidade do Minho, P-4710-057 Braga, Portugal
Contact information at EDIRC.
Series data maintained by Maria João Thompson ().