Forecasting Turkish local elections
International Journal of Forecasting, cilt.28, sa.4, ss.813-821, 2012 (SSCI, Scopus)
- Yayın Türü: Makale / Tam Makale
- Cilt numarası: 28 Sayı: 4
- Basım Tarihi: 2012
- Doi Numarası: 10.1016/j.ijforecast.2012.05.002
- Dergi Adı: International Journal of Forecasting
- Derginin Tarandığı İndeksler: Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI), Scopus
- Sayfa Sayıları: ss.813-821
- Anahtar Kelimeler: AKP vote, Election forecasting, Local elections, Turkey
- TED Üniversitesi Adresli: Hayır
Özet
The literature on political forecasting is large, although the main focus of this literature is limited to a number of countries. Nevertheless, and despite the major differences between political systems, scientific forecasting work has proved to be broadly possible, with noteworthy extensions to new countries. This articleextends the literature further by developing a new forecasting model for local elections in Turkey.The basic motivation of this article is to test the usefulness of political forecasting in the contexts of alternative democratic settings. Turkey, in that sense, seems to be an interesting case for a number of reasons. First, the Turkish Republic has been a multi-party democracy since the mid-1940s. Although it has been interrupted by three military coups, the party and election system in Turkey has brought real alternations in the governmentstarting from very early years of the multi-party system. So, it is plausible to argue that Turkish voters have the tradition of evaluating the performances of political parties, as in any other Western-type democracy. That is to say,the dynamics of evaluations of political parties in Turkey follow a similar pattern to other contemporarydemocracies, being driven by economic and politicalforces. The main contribution of this analysis is the introduction of an explicit model, which can forecast the impact of economic and political variables across local elections in Turkey by using reliable, public, and macro-level data. In particular, this study offers a new forecastingmodel which tries to forecast the Justice and Development Party's (Adalet ve Kalknma Partisi, AKP) vote share in 81 cities. © 2012 International Institute of Forecasters.