Bruno Jérôme

Polls Fail in France: Forecasts of the 1997 Legislative Election

Abstract In France, political observers and politicians pay considerable attention to public opinion polls, using them as indicators of who will win the upcoming election. Before the 1997 French legislative contest, the polls consistently forecast a win for the ruling Right party coalition. To almost everyones surprise, they were wrong. We document the extent of their error, then speculate on why it occurred. Finally, we propose a political economy model as an alternative, and more accurate, means of forecasting French legislative elections.

Reordering the French Election Calendar: Forecasting the Consequences for 2002

. French politicians sometimes change election rules for political advantage. In the Spring of 2001, the ruling Socialists pushed through the inversion of the 2002 election calendar despite stiff opposition. What were the consequences of scheduling the presidential election before the legislature elections? Employing new techniques for French election forecasting, we show that the inversion brought great vote gains to the Socialist-led coalition in both the legislative and presidential arenas. One advantage of this forecasting methodology is that it allows counterfactual comparisons in advance of the actual election contest. Comparing the scenarios ‘inversion’ versus ‘no inversion’, the Socialist leadership appeared highly strategic and successful.

Is local politics local? French evidence

In advanced democracies, are local political decisions determined by local events? Or are they really shaped by national forces? For the United States case, the evidence on this question is mixed. For the French case, the focus here, the evidence is also mixed, but less hard. In fact, for cantonal elections, in many ways archtypical local affairs, relevant systematic findings are virtually absent. We ask whether the cantonal elections of the Fifth Republic can be better understood as national, rather than local, contests. Our analysis leads us to the conclusion that the basic answer is, ‘yes’. There appear several theoretical reasons for this, which we give an account of. Further, we go on to show that cantonal races can actually serve as barometers to forecast upcoming national races.

Forecasting the 2002 Elections: Lessons from a Political Economy Model

The presidential and legislative electoral contests had unusual outcomes. For only the second time since 1969, the Left was eliminated after the first ballot. In addition, voters acting as in the first ballot of a proportional election selected Jean-Marie Le Pen, leader of the National Front (FN) over Lionel Jospin, the incumbent Prime Minister. Further, President Jacques Chirac was reelected after the second ballot with 82.21 percent of the vote, an extreme result for the Fifth Republic. Finally, the subsequent legislative elections gave him fully 399 Deputies in the National Assembly. Could the 2002 upheaval have been forecast through an analysis of political and economic conditions existing months before?

Forecasting the 2012 US Presidential Election: Lessons from a State-by-State Political Economy Model

Since 2008, the economic fallout from the subprime mortgage crisis has led to the defeat of a number of incumbents in the worlds major democracies. For instance, in the former EU-15, eight countries (including France) have ousted their incumbents in favor of new leaders. The United States is no exception, and the 2012 US presidential election will see Barack Obama running for a second term during difficult economic times. After hitting a high of 10% in October 2009, the nations unemployment rate decreased to 8.2% in May 2012. Nonetheless, this is still 0.7 percentage point higher than what Ronald Reagan faced in 1984 or what confronted George H.W. Bush in 1992 as they ran for their second terms. Looking at measures of presidential popularity for the month of May since 1980, Barack Obamas approval rating is at 46% in the Gallup polls, which is the third-worst rating after George W. Bush (30% in 2008) and George H.W. Bush (39.4% in 1992). Given Barack Obamas approval rating and the current national unemployment level, must we conclude that Barack Obama is irremediably on the ropes against Mitt Romney in 2012?

State-Level Forecasts for the 2016 US Presidential Elections: Political Economy Model Predicts Hillary Clinton Victory

© American Political Science Association, 2016 doi:10.1017/S1049096516001311 ........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................ ........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

Forecasting the 2012 U.S. Presidential Election: What Can We Learn from a State Level Political Economy Model?

Most common work in the literature is based on aggregated models (see e.g., Campbell and Lewis-Beck, 2008) with some important exceptions that use data at the state level, e.g., Rosenstone (1983), Holbrook (1991) and Campbell (1992). These aggregated models, are based on either survey results or economic data at the national level. Here, in order to improve the accuracy of predictions, we examine the politico-economic determinants of presidential voting using pooled time series on a state-specific basis. After investigating a wide range of variables among which areas of concentrated strength of parties through time and territories in order to determine an appropriate model, we estimate which party’s candidate can be expected to win each state. Then, taking into account Electoral College voting strength, we aggregate state by state predictions in order to estimate the final winner in 2012 and the candidate’s expected share of the Electoral College vote.

Modeling and Forecasting the 2010 French Regional Elections: A Political Economy Approach

In this paper, we are trying first to exhibit why – paradoxically – the local economic performance is not able to explain the regional vote in France. In a second time, we build a Political Economy model (pooled time series), testing voting for regional incumbents and Front National as well. It turns out that the regional vote is influenced mainly by economical and political forces such as unemployment, the credibility of the President (or the Prime minister) and local political strongholds. Then we generate a forecast for the next 2010 elections.