Estimating Parliamentary composition through electoral polls

Frederic Udina and Pedro Delicado

Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A, 2005, vol. 168, issue 2, 387-399

Abstract: Summary. 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).

Date: 2005
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-985X.2005.00354.x

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: https://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://ordering.onli ... 1111/(ISSN)1467-985X

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A is currently edited by A. Chevalier and L. Sharples

More articles in Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A from Royal Statistical Society Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().