All electoral systems have an electoral formula that converts proportions of votes into Parliamentary seats.Pre-electoral polls usually focus on estimating proportions of votes and then apply the electoral formula to give a forecast of Parliamentary composition. We describe the problems that arise from this approach: there will typically be a bias in the forecast. We study the origin of the bia...

Forecasting seat outcomes in legislative elections in countries with stable, two-party systems is su ciently challenging as to have proven elusive for much of democratic experience. Forecasting an election in a relatively new democracy with a uid multi-party system, therefore, would seem on its face to be a hopeless objective. In this paper I attempt to demonstrate that election forecasting in ...

In 2022, two regional elections were held that initiated a new electoral cycle in Spain. The first, February, took place Castilla y León where, for the first time, extreme right-wing party, VOX, formed coalition government with Partido Popular, while, simultaneously, left-wing party Podemos was barely left parliamentary representation. second, June Andalusia, led to VOX increasing its represent...

The defining feature of parliamentary democracies is the fact that the executive derives its mandate from and is politically responsible to the legislature. This implies that who forms the government is not determined by an election alone, but is the outcome of a bargaining process among the parties represented in the parliament. Furthermore, it implies that the government may terminate at any ...