• search hit 22 of 187
Back to Result List

Forecasting runoff elections using candidate evaluations from first round exit polls

  • We draw attention to a simple yet underappreciated way of forecasting the outcomes of elections involving two rounds of voting: surveying the voters’ candidate evaluations in first round exit polls, poststratifying the sample proportions of reported votes to official first round election returns, and redistributing the votes for eliminated competitors according to their supporters’ lower-order preferences among the viable alternatives in round two. We argue that the approach is likely to outperform standard pre-election surveys, due to its better coverage and reduced measurement error, and the possibility of correcting for sample selection. We set out the practical details of the method and demonstrate its usefulness by employing a recent German mayoral election as an empirical case. Thirteen candidates were competing in the first round, while there were six candidates in the decisive second round. The runoff result was forecast two weeks in advance with an average absolute error of less than one percentage point.

Export metadata

Additional Services

Share in Twitter Search Google Scholar
Metadaten
Document Type:Article
Language:English
Author(s):Peter Selb, Michael Herrmann, Simon MunzertORCiD, Thomas Schübel, Susumu Shikano
Parent Title (English):International Journal of Forecasting
Publication year:2013
Publishing Institution:Hertie School
First Page:541
Last Page:547
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijforecast.2013.02.001
Release Date:2020/01/27
Volume:29
Issue:4
Licence of document (German):Metadaten / metadata
Verstanden ✔
Diese Webseite verwendet technisch erforderliche Session-Cookies. Durch die weitere Nutzung der Webseite stimmen Sie diesem zu. Unsere Datenschutzerklärung finden Sie hier.