Political Meteorology: An Enquiry Into The Ability Of By-Elections To Forecast The Outcome Of The Subsequent General Election During The Period From The Third Reform Act To The Great War 1885-1910 Or Anecdote Not Data, Ralph Collins Walter

This paper examines the value of by-elections as predictors of the next general election during the period from the third reform act to the passing of the parliament act of 1911. It finds that gross counts of party changes or swings in voting percentage provide no statistical insight. A heuristic review of the by-elections during the last year of a parliament occasionally provides some explanatory intuition.