Abstract
Whether parties have won or lost votes relative to the previous election is central to the media coverage of elections. The vote share in the previous election thus is a salient reference point that may affect the behavior of political actors in campaign. For example, when a party stands to lose vote share, loss averse politicians and partisans may invest more energy and resources in the campaign, and loss averse voters may be more motivated to actually go and vote, compared to when a party stands to gain vote share. We perform an empirical analysis relating parties’ vote share in an election to their vote share in the polls some weeks before the election. Our analyses of 276 elections across 11 countries with proportional representation shows that, all else equal, a party losing vote share in the polls relative to the previous election, performs better in the election. Using additional data sources, we investigate several possible mechanisms for the finding.