Forecasting Austrian national elections: The Grand Coalition model

Autor(en)

Julian Aichholzer, Johanna Willmann

Abstrakt

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.

Organisation(en)

Institut für Staatswissenschaft

Journal

International Journal of Forecasting

Band

30

Seiten

55-64

Anzahl der Seiten

10

ISSN

0169-2070

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijforecast.2013.07.011

Publikationsdatum

2014

Peer-reviewed

Ja

ÖFOS 2012

506014 Vergleichende Politikwissenschaft, 509013 Sozialstatistik

Schlagwörter

ASJC Scopus Sachgebiete

Business and International Management

Link zum Portal

https://ucris.univie.ac.at/portal/de/publications/forecasting-austrian-national-elections-the-grand-coalition-model(e1863d75-53b6-4e1d-9efc-9b344efc756a).html