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By-elections, changing fortunes, uncertainty and the mid-term blues

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  • Simon Price
  • David Sanders

Abstract

If voters care about the size of the government's majority, then by-election votes should exaggerate national swings. Moreover, if there is uncertainty about the outcome of the general election and if voters” preferences are skewed in such a way as to give more weight to the “downside” outcome (least favourite party wins) than the “upside” (favoured party wins with a larger than preferred majority), then there will be a systematic tendency for governments to lose by-elections, regardless of any changes in national support. These predictions go beyond those generated by conventional explanations. The theory is successfully tested against data from 383 post-War elections. Copyright Kluwer Academic Publishers 1998

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  • Simon Price & David Sanders, 1998. "By-elections, changing fortunes, uncertainty and the mid-term blues," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 95(1), pages 131-148, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:pubcho:v:95:y:1998:i:1:p:131-148
    DOI: 10.1023/A:1004983108916
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    Cited by:

    1. Robert Hodgson & John Maloney, 2010. "Economic Voting in Britain, 1857-1914," Discussion Papers 1009, University of Exeter, Department of Economics.
    2. Caladan Barkovic-Parsons & Robert Hodgson & John Maloney, 2017. "Are marginals different? Evidence from British elections 1950–2015," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 171(3), pages 303-321, June.
    3. Hanretty, Chris, 2021. "Forecasting multiparty by-elections using Dirichlet regression," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 37(4), pages 1666-1676.

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