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Abstract. Standard economic voting models assume a dominant locus of policy responsibility, a single chief executive whose powers are fixed by certain inviolate institutional rules. The president‐centred US system serves as the paradigm here. However, economic voting may occur under a dual executive, whose powers change in response to the institutional rules themselves. France represents this second scenario. There are two executives, the President and the Prime Minister. Under conditions of cohabitation, with a partisan division of the power between the two offices, economic voting becomes more sophisticated. According to data from the 1993–1995 cohabitation, voters perceived that the Prime Minister, not the President, was responsible for the economy. Therefore, in the 1995 presidential contest, they directed their economic evaluations at the Gaullist party of the Prime Minister, not the Socialist party of the President.

One autumn out of four, election forecasting surpasses baseball as America's national pastime. Then, everyone wants to know who will win, and everyone has a guess. Now, with the ballots carefully counted, forecasters await their awards. Below, I evaluate the quality of a wide range of 1984 presidential and congressional forecasts. The evaluation proceeds from nonscientific to scientific approaches, although this distinction is sometimes blurred. To lower the level of suspense, I should say that some forecasts turned out to be quite good. By way of conclusion, I offer a set of rules for selecting a high-quality forecasting instrument.Lucky GuessesMany popular election forecasting rules take advantage of chance, which has been working in their favor. Perhaps the most famous is the World Series forecast, which says, "If the American League wins the World Series, then the Republican presidential candidate will win." This technique was accurate from 1952 to 1976, missed in 1980, but worked again in 1984 with the victory of the Detroit Tigers. A lesser known rule of this type, which is my personal favorite, is based on the Beaujolais wine harvest. Accordingly, "If the Beaujolais vintage looks bad, then the Republican will take the presidency." This has held post-1960, and continues to do so with the poor 1984 crop (yielding a wine too light, with little color). There are other such rules that relate more directly to the candidates themselves and, in that sense, have more verisimilitude.

Les modèles permettant d'expliquer les résultats électoraux d'un pays ne sont pas toujours de bons instruments de prévision. En particulier, ils utilisent souvent des variables indépendantes dont la valeur n'est pas connue suffisamment longtemps avant l'élection. Le modèle de Lewis-Beck et Rice, pour les élections à la Chambre des représentants des Etats-Unis, ne présente pas ce défaut : deux variables mesurées six mois avant l'élection ― la popularité du Président et la croissance réelle du PNB trimestriel ― permettent de bien prévoir les résultats en voix et les résultats en sièges. En appliquant ce modèle à l'étude des élections législatives françaises, les résultats obtenus sont très satisfaisants et peuvent servir de base à des prévisions électorales pour 1986 (pourcentage des voix obtenues par les partis de gauche et nombre des sièges attribués à ces partis).