This research both develops new methods and expands upon existing methodologies in order to improve our understanding of voting patterns and party competition in Britain. The thesis comprises five sections, each of which relates to a particular research focus. The first and principal section describes the process of determining a new method for decomposing electoral bias for three-party competition under simple plurality rules of voting. The study of electoral bias is important for voting systems that requires periodic boundary reviews intended to equalise electorate and to remove malapportionment. These papers describe both the process for developing the threeparty bias method and later its application to UK general elections from 1983 onwards. The second section uses aggregate data gathered for the elections to the Greater London Authority in order to understand the patterns of electoral support across the capital, particularly support for minor parties. A considerable amount of research effort has been expended upon providing reliable models for electoral forecasting both in the UK and elsewhere. The third section includes a paper that develops a forecast model that utilises aggregate local election data to estimate national vote shares for the three main parties in the UK. A fourth section brings together a series of papers that are linked by the themes of voter behaviour, either in terms of geographical or ballot context. A study of voter turnout in a London borough describes the relationship between proximity to polling station and electoral turnout at different types of election. A 8 number of papers included in this section also detail the effects of candidate ballot order on electoral support. The fifth and final section groups together two papers that using individual-level survey data to describe the pattern of candidate recruitment for local elections in Britain and, specifically, the under-recruitment of both women and Black, Asian and other minority ethnic candidates.

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Au cours des années 1970 et 1980, quelques politologues se sont lancés dans la conception de formules prévisionnelles basées sur des indicateurs politico-économiques afin d’anticiper les résultats de courses électorales. Cette discipline s’est considérablement développée aux États-Unis où l’on compte actuellement un grand nombre de modèles ayant pour objectif de prédire l’issue des élections au Congrès ou le sort des candidats à la présidence. Bien qu’un certain nombre de modèles aient vu le jour pour la France et le Royaume-Uni au cours des dernières années, le Canada, à l’instar de la majorité des démocraties, n’a reçu jusqu’à maintenant que bien peu d’attention. Ce mémoire vise par conséquent à développer un modèle ancré dans une théorie du vote capable de prédire suffisamment à l’avance la part du vote populaire récolté par la formation ministérielle lors des scrutins fédéraux canadiens. Pour ce faire, nous avons procédé à l’élaboration d’une formule de régression par la méthode des moindres carrés ordinaire exploitant les résultats des élections qui ont pris place depuis 1953. Cette formule est composée de cinq variables, à savoir la différence entre les taux de chômage canadien et américain trois mois avant la tenue du vote, le logarithme du nombre de mois passés au pouvoir par le parti sortant, un indicateur dichotomique concernant la substitution du premier ministre à proximité d’une élection, le nombre d’années d’expérience politique du premier ministre par rapport à son (sa) principal(e) adversaire et un facteur relatif à l’origine provinciale des leaders. / During the 1970s and 1980s, a small group of political scientists started to develop forecasting equations based on political and economic indicators to predict election results. Election forecasting is now a thriving discipline in the United States, where a large number of different models are being used to forecast the outcome of congressional elections or the fate of presidential candidates. Although forecasting models have been developed for France and the United Kingdom over the past years, Canada, like most other democracies, has received very little attention. The goal of this thesis is to develop a theoretically-driven model that can be used to predict the popular vote share of the incumbent party in Canadian federal elections with sufficient lead time. To this end, we devised an ordinary least squares regression model using the results of elections going back to 1953. This model is composed of five variables; the difference between the unemployment rates in Canada and the United States three months before the vote, the natural logarithm of the number of consecutive months the incumbent party has been in office, a dichotomous variable related to the substitution of the Prime Minister near an election, the number of years of political experience gained by the Prime Minister in relation to his/her main opponent, and a factor related to the province of origin of party leaders.

The diploma thesis "Estimation of the election results by respondents and its usage" discuss the methods of predicting the election results based on election expectations of individuals and shows how people form their expectations and how exact these expectations are. First short summary of existing methods of election results predictions and its limitations is presented - it also deals with pre-election surveys and its ambitions to predict the election results. The rest of the thesis focuses only on the prediction of the election results based on election expectations of individuals: prediction markets and aggregated estimations of respondents. Concept Wisdom of Crowds, from which both approaches originate, is presented together with concrete examples of application of the predictions based on opinions of prediction markets participants and respondents of the pre-election surveys. Results of the foreign studies confirm that the prediction markets predict the election results very well and with higher accuracy than the pre-election surveys. Current studies also positively evaluate the estimation of the election results done by respondents. Respondents are usually able to predict the election results, even several weeks before the elections. Last part of the thesis is based on my own quantitative...

本研究以1997年台灣縣市長選舉為標的，彙整政治學有關投票行為的相關理論，包含社會學研究途徑、社會心理學研究途徑與理性抉擇途徑的研究成果，整合該年度之總體與個體資料而設計出「特質調整模型」。特質調整模型是透過兩階段的操作模式進行預測，首先以基礎模型反應全國一致的因素，使之適用於台灣所有縣市，這些因素包括政黨認同、候選人取向與社會人口學變項。但由於各縣市狀況仍有不同，因此再進一步用延伸模型來考量各縣市的特殊選舉因素。延伸模型在基礎模型的規模上，以描述性統計來觀察選區情形後，再加入各地特質於模型之中，使其預測結果能反映各地特殊狀況。在延伸模型中，考量的因素包括議題取向、環境系絡因素、策略性投票、在位者表現、派系取向與賄選問題等。 在特質調整模型中，本研究嘗試以對數迴歸模型對各地區進行模擬計算，並用機率論的方式呈現每一位受訪者的投票可能，以反應政治學理論中的不確定性。研究結果發現基礎模型確能相當地反應出台灣各縣市的選舉狀況，描繪各地的一般狀況，而延伸模型又能更精確地貼近各地的選舉結果，反映各地的特殊選情。在資料完整的狀況下，最後各縣市的預測誤差均不超過抽樣誤差。 第一章 緒論 1 壹、研究動機與目的 1 貳、文獻檢閱 3 第二章 研究方法 25 壹、研究範圍與資料來源 25 貳、模型建構 28 參、研究架構 33 肆、模型評估 35 第三章 基礎模型 38 壹、 變數建構 38 貳、 基礎模型的探討 42 參、 討論 84 第四章 延伸模型：基礎模型的應用 87 壹、延伸模型的設計 87 貳、基隆市的延伸模型 89 參、台北縣的延伸模型 98 肆、桃園縣的延伸模型 115 伍、新竹市的延伸模型 123 陸、台中市的延伸模型 129 柒、彰化縣的延伸模型 140 捌、台南市的延伸模型 153 玖、台南縣的延伸模型 166 拾、小結 172 第五章 結論 174 壹、研究回顧 174 貳、研究效果評估 178 參、研究限制與未來研究建議 179 參考文獻 184 / This research is focused on Taiwanese county magistrates election in 1997, and based on the aggregate and individual data to design a forecasting model, named "Joined Idiosyncrasies Adjusted Model" (JIA Model). This model is operated by two stages. First, I compute a basic model, which reflects some general factors in every county. Second, I design extended models to adjust the output of basic models. Those extended models can precisely show the situation of every single county. In this model, I try to use logistic regression to compute the candidate's votes, and present the final forecast output in probability. This model made the county magistrates election more predictable, and the model errors are less than the sampling errors.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / This research project proposes to try to isolate and measure the influence of “regime fatigue” on gubernatorial elections and senatorial elections in the United States where there is no incumbent running. The research begins with a review of the negativity effect and its potential influence on schema-based impression forming by voters. Applicable literature on the topics of social clustering and homophily is then highlighted as it provides the vehicle through which the negativity effect disseminates across collections of socially-clustered individuals and ultimately contributes to changing tides of public opinion despite the fact that the political party identification can remain relatively fixed in the aggregate.