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Are the Sweden Democrats really Sweden’s largest party? A maximum likelihood ratio test on the simplex

Bergman, Jakob LU orcid and Holmquist, Björn LU orcid (2015) In Working Papers in Statistics
Abstract
In August 2015 a Swedish newspaper claimed that the Sweden Democrats were the largest political party in Sweden based on the results of single poll. We ask ourselves if this is a correct conclusion, considering the fact that the three largest parties in the poll were of roughly the same size. We analyse the parameter space and identify the subspace where the Sweden Democrats are the largest party. Using this we construct a maximum likelihood ratio test and derive its distribution under the null hypothesis. We finally apply our test to the data and obtaining a p-value between 0.09 and 0.14 are able to refute the claim in the newspaper. Based on the available data one cannot draw the conclusion that the Sweden Democrats are the largest party... (More)
In August 2015 a Swedish newspaper claimed that the Sweden Democrats were the largest political party in Sweden based on the results of single poll. We ask ourselves if this is a correct conclusion, considering the fact that the three largest parties in the poll were of roughly the same size. We analyse the parameter space and identify the subspace where the Sweden Democrats are the largest party. Using this we construct a maximum likelihood ratio test and derive its distribution under the null hypothesis. We finally apply our test to the data and obtaining a p-value between 0.09 and 0.14 are able to refute the claim in the newspaper. Based on the available data one cannot draw the conclusion that the Sweden Democrats are the largest party in Sweden. (Less)
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author
and
organization
publishing date
type
Working paper/Preprint
publication status
published
subject
keywords
Isometric logratio transformation, Largest party, Maximum likelihood ratio test, Political polls, Polls, Sweden, Simplex
in
Working Papers in Statistics
issue
12
pages
10 pages
publisher
Department of Statistics, Lund university
language
English
LU publication?
yes
id
2f691e26-08fa-46dd-92e3-fb17d8b9af5d (old id 8310044)
date added to LUP
2016-04-04 11:04:55
date last changed
2020-08-30 02:29:50
@misc{2f691e26-08fa-46dd-92e3-fb17d8b9af5d,
  abstract     = {{In August 2015 a Swedish newspaper claimed that the Sweden Democrats were the largest political party in Sweden based on the results of single poll. We ask ourselves if this is a correct conclusion, considering the fact that the three largest parties in the poll were of roughly the same size. We analyse the parameter space and identify the subspace where the Sweden Democrats are the largest party. Using this we construct a maximum likelihood ratio test and derive its distribution under the null hypothesis. We finally apply our test to the data and obtaining a p-value between 0.09 and 0.14 are able to refute the claim in the newspaper. Based on the available data one cannot draw the conclusion that the Sweden Democrats are the largest party in Sweden.}},
  author       = {{Bergman, Jakob and Holmquist, Björn}},
  keywords     = {{Isometric logratio transformation; Largest party; Maximum likelihood ratio test; Political polls; Polls; Sweden; Simplex}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  note         = {{Working Paper}},
  number       = {{12}},
  publisher    = {{Department of Statistics, Lund university}},
  series       = {{Working Papers in Statistics}},
  title        = {{Are the Sweden Democrats really Sweden’s largest party? A maximum likelihood ratio test on the simplex}},
  url          = {{https://lup.lub.lu.se/search/files/5690215/8310046.pdf}},
  year         = {{2015}},
}