Modeling voter choice to predict the final outcome of two-stage elections

Most election forecasting research to date has been conducted in the context of single-round elections. However, more than 40 countries in the world employ a two-stage process, where actual voting data are available between the first and the second rounds to help politicians understand their position in relation to each other and to voter preferences and to help them predict the final outcome of the election. In this study we take advantage of the theoretical foundation on voter behavior from the political science literature and the recent methodological advances in choice modeling to develop a Nested Logit Factor Model of voter choice which we use to predict the final outcome of two stage elections and gain insights about the underlying political landscape. We apply the proposed model to data from the first stage and predict the final outcome of two stage elections based on the inferences made from the first stage results. We demonstrate how our proposed model can help politicians understand their competitive position immediately after the first round of actual voting and test its predictive accuracy in the run-off election across 11 different state governorship elections.     

From 2000 Bush–Gore to 2006 Italian elections: voting at fifty-fifty and the contrarian effect

A sociophysical model for opinion dynamics is shown to embody a series of recent western hung national votes all set at the unexpected and very improbable edge of a fifty-fifty score. It started with the Bush–Gore 2000 American presidential election, followed by the 2002 Stoiber–Schröder, then the 2005 Schröder–Merkel German elections, and finally the 2006 Prodi-Berlusconi Italian elections. In each case, the country was facing drastic choices, the running competing parties were advocating very different programs and millions of voters were involved. Moreover, polls were given a substantial margin for the predicted winner. While all these events were perceived as accidental and isolated, our model suggests that indeed they are deterministic and obey to one single universal phenomena associated to the effect of contrarian behavior on the dynamics of opinion forming. The not hung Bush–Kerry 2004 presidential election is shown to belong to the same universal frame. To conclude, the existence of contrarians hints at the repetition of hung elections in the near future.     

从城市社区看社会分层与社会不平等——对天津市两个商品房社区的比较研究

依据对天津市两个居住区进行参与观察和个案访谈所获得的田野材料,通过比较研究的方法,揭示了社区的阶层化现状,勾画出不同社区居民之间的社会分层和不平等状况。并进一步指出,缩小城市区位差异、减少城市中的居住隔离不仅牵涉自然资源和社会资源的公平分配和使用,同时也关乎个体发展的代际公平。