Bayesian model checking; Bayesian hierarchical model; Ecological inference; Election data; Spatial data

To help settle the debate triggered the day after any election around the origin and destination of the vote of winners and losers, a Bayesian analysis of the results in a pair of consecutive elections is proposed. It is based on a model that simultaneously carries out a cluster analysis of the areas in which the results are broken into and links the results in the two elections of areas in a given cluster through a vote switch matrix. The number of clusters is chosen both through predictive checks as well as by testing whether the residuals are spatially correlated or not. The analysis is tried on the results in Barcelona of a pair of consecutive elections held just four months apart, in 2003 for the Catalan parliament and in 2004 for the Spanish parliament. The proposed approach, which reconstructs individual behavior from aggregated data, can be exported to be a solution for any ecological inference problem where one cannot assume that all the areas are exchangeable the way typically assumed by other ecological inference methods.

Peer Reviewed