Forecasting partisan dynamics in Europe

Abstract

Observing the distribution of the old European Union 15 (EU15) governments ordered by political families since 1978, a sharp Right–Left partisan cycle seems to appear. If we hypothesize that the EU15 is one geo-political unit called Euroland, such an empirical observation is accurate both for the aggregate number of Prime Ministers in office and for the aggregate vote share. In our Euroland, we consider each country of the EU15 as a region where citizens can choose between five political families when voting (the classic Right, the moderate and social-democratic Left, the Left of the Left, the far Right and rightist populists, and the ecologists). Our panel data from these countries includes results from 130 legislative elections, 1978–2008. After building a politico–economic vote function for each political bloc, we estimate a seemingly unrelated regression (SUR) from which we forecast their respective electoral weights in Europe for the years to come. Accordingly, should we have more Keynesian, monetarist or free market oriented policies? Forecasting partisan dynamics should provide some answers.