Article
A Fast, Easy, and Efficient Estimator for Multiparty Electoral Data

Authors: Honaker J.¹; Katz J.N.²; King G.³

Source: Political Analysis, Volume 10, Number 1, 1 February 2002 , pp. 84-100(17)

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Abstract:

Katz and King have previously developed a model for predicting or explaining aggregate electoral results in multiparty democracies. Their model is, in principle, analogous to what least-squares regression provides American political researchers in that two-party system. Katz and King applied their model to three-party elections in England and revealed a variety of new features of incumbency advantage and sources of party support. Although the mathematics of their statistical model covers any number of political parties, it is computationally demanding, and hence slow and numerically imprecise, with more than three parties. In this paper we produce an approximate method that works in practice with many parties without making too many theoretical compromises. Our approach is to treat the problem as one of missing data. This allows us to use a modification of the fast EMis algorithm of King, Honaker, Joseph, and Scheve and to provide easy-to-use software, while retaining the attractive features of the Katz and King model, such as the t distribution and explicit models for uncontested seats.

Document Type: Original article

Affiliations: 1: Department of Political Science, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1472. e-mail: tercer@ucla.edu 2: Division of Humanities and Social Science, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125. e-mail: jkatz@caltech.edu 3: Department of Government, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138. e-mail: king@harvard.edu

Publication date: 2002-02-01

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'The relatively new field of political methodology is growing exponentially; is improving empirical work in every field of the discipline; and is even making major contributions to empirical and methodological scholarship well outside the diffuse borders of political science. Political Analysis chronicles these exciting developments by publishing the most sophisticated scholarship in the field. It is the place to learn new methods, to find some of the best empirical scholarship, and to publish your best research.'
Prof. Gary King, Dept. of Government, Harvard University