Forecasting French Legislative Election: What if Macron was Forced to Dissolve?

• In Event: Political Forecasting at the Cutting Edge

Abstract

In France, the recent riots of the “yellow jackets” and Emmanuel Macron’s collapsed popularity ask the question of an early legislative election as a way to solve a crisis which began in November 2018.
In this paper we propose a renewed model and give a forecast for French legislative election doing as if it was held “now”.
However, compared to our past models, we must take into account the new political order in France since the victory of the 2017 President’s party, “La Republique en Marche” (LREM).
This drive us to consider new equations and variables to build the best model able to give the strongest chance to get accurate forecasts. For instance,
three questions will be raised:
(1) At which level do we have to forecast (local or aggregated)?
(2) How to include the incumbent LREM party located both on the right and the left of the political spectrum?
(3) Do we have to let aside traditional single equation vote functions to move toward multiparty models such as SUR models?
Thus, we should be able to anticipate if Emmanuel Macron should be right to sacrifice his so large majority.

Authors

• Bruno Jerome, University of Paris II Pantheon Assas

• Veronique Jerome, University of Paris XI-Sud Orsay