Citizen Forecasting of the 2021 German Election

• In Event: Forecasting the 2021 German Federal Election

Abstract

The research will use ‘citizen forecasts’ to predict the German Federal Election taking place on 26 September 2021. This approach asks citizens to forecast which party will win the nation as a whole, and predicts the winning party to be the one which most citizens say will win. Previous studies have shown that ‘citizen forecasts’ predict better than any other approach in Great Britain (Murr et al. forthcoming) and the United States (Graefe 2014). But the timing of the data collection forced most of the studies using citizen forecasts to forecast elections ex post, that is after they occured. To date, there are only three ex ante citizen-forecasting papers (Lewis-Beck and Stegmaier, 2011; Murr, 2016; and Murr and Lewis-Beck 2020). Two of them forecasted British General Elections; one of them forecasted the recent 2020 US Presidential Elections. The proposed research will replicate this forecasting approach in the upcoming German Federal Election. The proposed research will use Politbarometer data to predict the seat share of parties as well as which party or coalition will form the government.

Author

• Andreas Erwin Murr, University of Warwick