 Forecasting Austrian national elections: The Grand Coalition modelJulian Aichholzer () and Johanna Willmann International Journal of Forecasting, 2014, vol. 30, issue 1, 55-64 Abstract: Forecasting the outcomes of national elections has become established practice in several democracies. In the present paper, we develop an economic voting model for forecasting the future success of the Austrian ‘grand coalition’, i.e., the joint electoral success of the two mainstream parties SPOE and OEVP, at the 2013 Austrian Parliamentary Elections. Our main argument is that the success of both parties is strongly tied to the accomplishments of the Austrian system of corporatism, that is, the Social Partnership (Sozialpartnerschaft), in providing economic prosperity. Using data from Austrian national elections between 1953 and 2008 (n=18), we rely on the following predictors in our forecasting model: (1) unemployment rates, (2) previous incumbency of the two parties, and (3) dealignment over time. We conclude that, in general, the two mainstream parties benefit considerably from low unemployment rates, and are weakened whenever they have previously formed a coalition government. Further, we show that they have gradually been losing a good share of their voter basis over recent decades. Keywords: Austria; Election forecasting; Economic voting; Multi-party system; Social Partnership (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:intfor:v:30:y:2014:i:1:p:55-64 DOI: 10.1016/j.ijforecast.2013.07.011 Access Statistics for this article International Journal of Forecasting is currently edited by R. J. Hyndman More articles in International Journal of Forecasting from Elsevier |
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