Estimating subnational preferences across the European Union. Issue 1 (27th January 2021)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Lipps, Jana; Schraff, Dominik
• Is Part Of: Political science research and methods. Volume 9:Issue 1(2021)
• Page Start: 197
• Page End: 205
• Publication Date: 2021-01-27
• Subjects: Multi-level and hierarchical models; Political science -- Periodicals; 320
• DOI: 10.1017/psrm.2019.38
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 2049-8470

Abstract

Abstract: Subnational analyses of political preferences are substantively relevant and offer advantages for causal inference. Yet, our knowledge on regional political preferences across Europe is limited, not least because there is a lack of adequate data. The rich Eurobarometer (EB) data is a promising source for European-wide regional information. Yet, it is only representative for the national level. This paper compares state-of-the-art methods for estimating regional preferences from nationally representative EB data, validating predictions with regionally representative surveys. Our analysis highlights a number of challenges for estimating regional preferences across Europe, such as data availability, variable selection, and over-fitting. We find that predictions are best using a Bayesian additive regression tree with synthetic post-stratification.