Chapter 22 Further Reading: Down-Ballot and Global Forecasting

House Forecasting and the Generic Ballot

Bafumi, J., Erikson, R.S., & Wlezien, C. (2010). "Ideological Balancing, Generic Polls and Midterm Congressional Elections." Journal of Politics, 72(3), 705–719. Examines the predictive utility of the generic ballot for midterm seat outcomes, including the mechanism by which national partisan tides translate into individual seat changes.

Jacobson, G.C. (2015). The Politics of Congressional Elections. (9th ed.) Pearson. The definitive reference text on congressional elections, covering incumbency, candidate quality, campaign finance, and forecasting methodology. Chapter 8 on congressional election forecasting is essential background.

Campbell, J.E. (1992). "Forecasting the Presidential Vote in the States." American Journal of Political Science, 36(2), 386–407. Foundational analysis of the relationship between national presidential vote and down-ballot outcomes — relevant for understanding coattail effects in House forecasting.

Sides, J., & Vavreck, L. (2013). The Gamble: Choice and Chance in the 2012 Presidential Election. Princeton University Press. Includes detailed analysis of the generic ballot and fundamentals in the 2012 cycle; methodologically transparent in ways that illuminate House forecasting practice.

Seats-Votes Relationships

Grofman, B., & King, G. (2007). "The Future of Partisan Symmetry as a Judicial Test for Partisan Gerrymandering After LULAC v. Perry." Election Law Journal, 6(1), 2–35. Reviews the statistical basis for measuring partisan advantage in legislative maps, including the efficiency gap and related metrics.

Stephanopoulos, N.O., & McGhee, E.M. (2015). "Partisan Gerrymandering and the Efficiency Gap." University of Chicago Law Review, 82(2), 831–900. The paper that introduced the efficiency gap concept. Essential reading for understanding the geometric relationship between vote distribution and seat outcomes.

King, G., & Browning, R.X. (1987). "Democratic Representation and Partisan Bias in Congressional Elections." American Political Science Review, 81(4), 1251–1273. Classic analysis of the seats-votes curve and its historical evolution in American congressional elections.

MRP Methods

Gelman, A., & Little, T.C. (1997). "Poststratification into Many Categories Using Hierarchical Logistic Regression." Survey Methodology, 23, 127–135. The original paper introducing the MRP framework for election forecasting. More accessible than the title suggests; worth reading alongside the chapter.

Park, D.K., Gelman, A., & Bafumi, J. (2004). "Bayesian Multilevel Estimation with Poststratification: State-Level Estimates from National Polls." Political Analysis, 12(4), 375–385. First major political science application of MRP to U.S. state opinion estimation.

Wang, Y., Rothschild, D., Goel, S., & Gelman, A. (2015). "Forecasting Elections with Non-Representative Polls." International Journal of Forecasting, 31(3), 980–991. Demonstrates that MRP can produce accurate election forecasts from highly non-representative samples (using an Xbox gaming platform survey). An important paper for understanding the power and limits of demographic adjustment.

Hanretty, C. (2020). "An Introduction to Multilevel Regression and Post-Stratification for Estimating Constituency Opinion." Political Studies Review, 18(4), 630–645. The most accessible technical introduction to MRP for the UK constituency context; closely related to the YouGov approach described in the chapter.

International Election Forecasting

Lewis-Beck, M.S., & Stegmaier, M. (2000). "Economic Determinants of Electoral Outcomes." Annual Review of Political Science, 3, 183–219. The cross-national overview of economic voting, documenting its presence across 23 countries and its variation across institutional contexts.

Jennings, W., & Wlezien, C. (2018). "Election Polling Errors across Time and Space." Nature Human Behaviour, 2(4), 276–283. Cross-national analysis of polling error in 45 countries over multiple decades — the empirical backbone of the chapter's claim that polling failure is a global structural problem.

Pickup, M., & Johnston, R. (2008). "Campaign Trial Heats as Electoral Information: Evidence from the 2004 and 2006 Canadian Federal Elections." Electoral Studies, 27(3), 464–476. Demonstrates the applicability of American-style poll aggregation approaches to Canadian federal elections — one of the cleaner tests of cross-national methodological transfer.

UK Elections and YouGov MRP

YouGov (2017, June 7). YouGov MRP Model: Hung Parliament Projected. YouGov Research. The original publication of YouGov's 2017 projection and technical explanation. Available at yougov.co.uk.

Mellon, J., & Prosser, C. (2017). "Twitter and Facebook are not Representative of the General Population: Political Attitudes and Demographics of British Social Media Users." Research & Politics, 4(3). Demonstrates the selection biases in social media as a polling substitute — relevant to the data-scarcity discussion in the chapter.

Fieldhouse, E., Green, J., Evans, G., Mellon, J., & Prosser, C. (2020). Electoral Shocks: The Volatile Voter in a Turbulent World. Oxford University Press. Comprehensive analysis of the 2015–2019 British electoral period, including detailed analysis of the YouGov MRP model's performance and the mechanisms behind Labour's 2017 surge.

Germany and Multi-Party Systems

Gschwend, T., & Schoen, H. (Eds.) (2013). Strategies for Electoral Research: A German Approach to Election Studies. Social Science Open Access Repository. Overview of German electoral research methodology, including discussion of coalition forecasting challenges.

Bowler, S., & Farrell, D.M. (Eds.) (2011). Electoral Strategies and Political Marketing. St. Martin's Press. Cross-national examination of electoral competition in different institutional contexts.

Brazil and Developing Democracy Forecasting

Leal, D.L., & Rennó, L. (Eds.) (2019). Brazilian Elections in the 21st Century. Lexington Books. Overview of Brazilian electoral politics and the specific methodological challenges in Brazilian polling and forecasting.

Hunter, W., & Power, T.J. (2019). "Bolsonaro and Brazil's Illiberal Backlash." Journal of Democracy, 30(1), 68–82. Analysis of the political context of the 2018 Brazilian election — necessary background for understanding the data challenges described in the chapter.

Parallel Vote Tabulation and Election Integrity

Bjornlund, E.C. (2004). Beyond Free and Fair: Monitoring Elections and Building Democracy. Wilson Center Press. Comprehensive overview of election observation methodology, including PVT and its role in election integrity assessment in developing democracies.

IFES (International Foundation for Electoral Systems). (2014). Quick Count and Election Observation. IFES. Technical manual for designing and implementing parallel vote tabulation; the primary reference for PVT methodology in the international election monitoring community.