On the Timeline of Elections, Dr. Christopher Wlezien, September 22|23, 2022

To study the evolution of electoral preferences, Wlezien and Erikson (2002) propose assessing the relationship between pre-election vote intentions and the final vote for a set of elections. That is, they model poll data not as a set of different time series, which are difficult to analyze in most election years in most countries because of missing data and survey error, but as a series of cross-sections—across elections—for each day of the election ‘timeline.’ Although the method does not provide information about preference dynamics in particular election years, it does reveal how preferences change over time across elections. This is what we often want to know – how the Election Day vote comes into focus in the polls in a series of elections. Using the method, it is possible to model the structure and progression of poll-vote errors across countries, parties, and electoral contexts. In this talk, I introduce the method, describe its use in previously published research, and then apply it to data from nearly 30,000 national polls in over 200 elections in 30 countries since 1942 to assess how institutional and party characteristics matter. I conclude by considering directions for future research. slides