An international element in the vote?

Abstract The paper tests the ‘folk’ hypothesis that the vote at elections in different countries is affected by international opinion swings which are sometimes to the right and sometimes to the left. An hypothesis that, if it had been true, would have allowed us to predict the election outcome in one country by considering the outcome in recent elections in other countries. In order to test this hypothesis all (governmental) elections between 1948 and 1985 in 17 main democracies are considered. A set of series S(i, t), where i is a country and t time, showing the left/right-swing at the election is constructed. We next delete the i-index and reach the S(t)-swing series. The hypothesis is then operationalized as saying that S(t) contains positive autocorrelation. The S(t)-series is shown to behave as perfect white noise, so the hypothesis is rejected.