A Geometric Model of Elections in Five Federal Democracies
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Richard J. Heggen
Abstract
In an analysis of 1,825 state or provincial election outcomes in five federal democracies the rate of decay of incumbency (K) serves to partition the distribution of the vote for the incumbent party, the party of the head of government, between those who win a subsequent term and those who do not. In conjunction with the mean and standard deviation of the distribution, the weighted mean of the vote in re-election and defeat is identified. The model’s predictions are generally within 2–3 percentage points of the actual outcome.
Acknowledgments
Many thanks to anonymous reviewers of this journal for their thoughtful critiques and suggestions. Thanks, too, to several cohorts of graduate assistants in the M.A. in political science program of the Reuben O’D. Askew Department of Government who assisted the second author in the collection or proofing of an ever-growing data file: Michelle Adams, Daniel Dorman, Carter Edwards, Erin Jackson, Matthew Leight, John Link, Megan Morrison, Yamisle Roca, Brian Rosebrock, and Grace Wheeler.
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Outside funding: None.
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Conflicts of interest: None.
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Data availability: Most of the data used in the foregoing analysis is already available at Harvard Dataverse. Upon publication, a new, updated data file will be posted under the title of this letter.
Appendix: Elections by Country, State or Province, and Year
References
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Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Articles
- Party Proximities in Voting Advice Applications – Identifying Structural Breaks in Data from the German Wahl-O-Mat
- A Geometric Model of Elections in Five Federal Democracies
- Hybrid Modeling Techniques for Municipal Solid Waste Forecasting: An Application to OECD Countries
- The Great Powers Competition and Increasing Entropy in the Local Media Across Africa and Asia
- Hierarchical Bayesian Modelling of Macroeconomic Variables in Ghana
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Articles
- Party Proximities in Voting Advice Applications – Identifying Structural Breaks in Data from the German Wahl-O-Mat
- A Geometric Model of Elections in Five Federal Democracies
- Hybrid Modeling Techniques for Municipal Solid Waste Forecasting: An Application to OECD Countries
- The Great Powers Competition and Increasing Entropy in the Local Media Across Africa and Asia
- Hierarchical Bayesian Modelling of Macroeconomic Variables in Ghana
