Economic influences on legislative elections in multiparty systems: France and Italy

For the United States, the issue of the impact of aggregate economic conditions on legislative election returns has received extensive research. For European countries, however, research is much less plentiful. In particular, multiparty systems such as France and Italy lack study. For both these nations, we find that worsening aggregate economic conditions significantly increase the legislative vote for leftist parties, which have traditionally played an opposition role. Further, these models seem strong enough to provide good prediction of the actual legislative vote share. For example, they manage to forecast the 1981 victory of the left in France, and the 1980 Communist party support in Italy.