The Impact of Candidates’ Profile and Campaign Decisions in Electoral Results: A Data Analytics Approach

Camilo Campos-Valdés, Eduardo Álvarez-Miranda, Mauricio Morales Quiroga, Jordi Pereira and Félix Liberona Durán
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Camilo Campos-Valdés: Doctorado en Sistemas de Ingeniería, Facultad de Ingeniería, Universidad de Talca, Curicó 3340000, Chile
Eduardo Álvarez-Miranda: School of Economics and Business, Universidad de Talca, Talca 3460000, Chile
Mauricio Morales Quiroga: Departamento de Ciencia Política y Administración Pública, Facultad de Ciencias Jurídicas y Sociales, Universidad de Talca, Santiago 8320000, Chile
Jordi Pereira: Faculty of Engineering and Sciences, Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez, Av. Padre Hurtado 750, Viña del Mar 2520000, Chile
Félix Liberona Durán: Escuela de Postgrado, Facultad de Arquitectura y Urbanismo, Universidad de Chile, Santiago 8320000, Chile

Mathematics, 2021, vol. 9, issue 8, 1-17

Abstract: In recent years, a wide range of techniques has been developed to predict electoral results and to measure the influence of different factors in these results. In this paper, we analyze the influence of the political profile of candidates (characterized by personal and political features) and their campaign effort (characterized by electoral expenditure and by territorial deployment strategies retrieved from social networks activity) on the electoral results. This analysis is carried out by using three of the most frequent data analyitcs algorithms in the literature. For our analysis, we consider the 2017 Parliamentary elections in Chile, which are the first elections after a major reform of the electoral system, that encompassed a transition from a binomial to a proportional system, a modification of the districts’ structure, an increase in the number of seats, and the requirement of gender parity in the lists of the different coalitions. The obtained results reveal that, regardless of the political coalition, the electoral experience of candidates, in particular in the same seat they are running for (even when the corresponding district is modified), is by large the most influential factor to explain the electoral results. However, the attained results show that the influence of other features, such as campaign expenditures, depends on the political coalition. Additionally, by means of a simulation procedure, we show how different levels of territorial deployment efforts might impact on the results of candidates. This procedure could be used by parties and coalitions when planning their campaign strategies.

Keywords: Chilean parliamentary election; candidate profiles; campaign efforts; territorial deployment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
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