German Election Research Articles

Combined Forecasts of the 2013 German Election: The PollyVote

The present study reviews the accuracy of four methods for forecasting the 2013 German election: polls; prediction markets; expert judgement; and quantitative models. On average, across the two months prior to the election, polls were most accurate, with a mean absolute error of 1.4 percentage points, followed by quantitative models (1.6), expert judgement (2.1) and prediction markets (2.3). In addition, the study provides new evidence for the benefits of combining forecasts. Averaging all available forecasts within and across the four methods provided more accurate predictions than the typical component forecast. The error reductions achieved through combining forecasts ranged from 5 per cent (compared to polls) to 41 per cent (compared to prediction markets). The results conform to prior research on US presidential elections, which showed that combining is one of the most effective methods to generating accurate election forecasts.

German Election Forecasting: Comparing and Combining Methods for 2013

The present study reviews the accuracy of four methods for forecasting the 2013 German election: polls; prediction markets; expert judgement; and quantitative models. On average, across the two months prior to the election, polls were most accurate, with a mean absolute error of 1.4 percentage points, followed by quantitative models (1.6), expert judgement (2.1) and prediction markets (2.3). In addition, the study provides new evidence for the benefits of combining forecasts. Averaging all available forecasts within and across the four methods provided more accurate predictions than the typical component forecast. The error reductions achieved through combining forecasts ranged from 5 per cent (compared to polls) to 41 per cent (compared to prediction markets). The results conform to prior research on US presidential elections, which showed that combining is one of the most effective methods to generating accurate election forecasts.

Attraktion der NS-Bewegung

The history of the rise of Nazism is usually written against the backdrop of the Weimar Republic’s decline. The economic depression, beginning in 1929, and an alleged ‘democracy without democrats’ seemed to pave the way for what eventually led to Hitler being appointed Reich Chancellor on 30 January 1933. While such factors surely were important, the positive vibrancies of Nazism among the German electorate—which were immanent to a partly affirmative ideology (and not only one consisting of antitheses)—have rather been obfuscated by the dominant narrative of an everlasting crisis. A new collected volume edited by Gudrun Brockhaus arising from a conference held at the Evangelische Akademie Tutzing in February 2013 tackles the Nazi movement from another perspective. What were positive factors contributing to the rise of Nazism? What would Nazism offer that no other party or movement notably could? In which ways did the Nazis succeed by offering answers to compensate for the psychological (and very real) trauma that was World War I? The new book builds on Brockhaus’s pioneering 1997 study Schauder und Idylle: Faschismus als Erlebnisangebot and puts some of her assumptions to a practical test. The volume is marked by an interdisciplinary approach, bringing together historians and psychologists from both a socio-psychological and a psychoanalytical perspective.

Do Media Respond to Party Conflict? Debates on European Integration in British, Dutch and German Party Manifestos and Newspapers, 1987–2006

How do policy issues reach the political agenda? This question has received ample scholarly attention over the last decades, yet only recently have researchers explicitly examined the ways in which the agendas of political parties and media interact. This study builds on this ongoing work to examine how the conflict among parties in terms of the policy stances they propose (positional conflict) and the frames they attach to policy issues (discursive conflict) affect media attention. By focusing on party debates on European integration in British, Dutch and German election campaigns between 1987 and 2006 and employing a pooled time-series analysis, the study shows that both positional and discursive conflict among parties boost media reporting on issues. These findings have important implications for our understanding of the dynamics of media attention in relation to particular policy issues, as well as the way in which parties and media interact within election campaigns.

Review Authorized Biography Angela Merkel

With Angela Merkel favoured to win the German election again, several political books about the German chancellor were published during 2013. Both in Germany and abroad, observers puzzled over the reasons for the on-going success of Mrs. Merkel, the scientist from East Berlin who became an internationally honoured stateswoman. One book stood out because of the label ‘authorized biography’ on the cover: Angela Merkel. The Chancellor and her world, written by Stefan Kornelius. Whether Merkel asked Kornelius, head of the international section of the Süddeutsche Zeitung, to write a book about her political career and vision, or just commented and approved a book Kornelius had written independently, is not mentioned. However, the fact is that Kornelius’ book is the first biography for which Merkel gave her consent. The question is: what new light does this authorized biography shed on the person behind the politician? This article was first published in EJLW on 14 October 2014.

Political Sophistication and Vote Intention Switching: The Timing of Electoral Volatility in the 2009 German Election Campaign

This article investigates the link between political sophistication and electoral volatility. Showing that there is disagreement in the literature on whether switching party preferences is related to low or high levels of political sophistication, it is then argued that the effect of sophistication on vote switching might differ depending on when switching is measured. The effect of timing on volatility is investigated by means of the Short-term panel of the 2009 German Longitudinal Election Study. Results indicate that timing indeed matters, while sophistication increases the probability of switching parties before the campaign, the effect of political sophistication becomes more negative as Election Day draws near.

Two Different Debates? Investigating the Relationship Between a Political Debate on TV and Simultaneous Comments on Twitter

While watching television, more and more citizens comment the program live on social media. This is especially interesting in the case of political debates, as viewers’ comments might not only allow us to tap into public opinion, but they can also be an influential factor of their own and contribute to public discourse. This article analyzes how the TV debate between the candidates for chancellor during the German election campaign 2013 was discussed on Twitter. To do so, the transcript of the debate is linked to a set of N = 120,557 tweets containing the hashtag #tvduell. The results indicate that the candidates were only to a minor degree successful in getting their topics to the Twitter debate. An optimistic reading of the results suggests that Twitter serves as a complement to draw attention to topics neglected in the official debate. A more pessimistic reading would point to the fact that the discourse on Twitter seems to be dominated by sarcastic or funny rather than by substantial content.

Why is Turnout So Low in Switzerland? Comparing the Attitudes of Swiss and German Citizens Towards Electoral Democracy

Why is Turnout So Low in Switzerland? Comparing the Attitudes of Swiss and German Citizens Towards Electoral Democracy

German Electoral Systems: Working Mechanism and Applicability to Korean Elections

German Electoral Systems: Working Mechanism and Applicability to Korean Elections

Using Bayesian Data Combination of Fundamental Variable-Based Forecasts and Poll-Based Forecasts to Predict the 2013 German Election

In this paper I present an election forecasting approach to predict the vote share of the governing coalition in German national elections. The model is composed of two independent prediction components – the first is based on poll data, the second on fundamental variables. Both approaches have their advantages and disadvantages when used in isolation. The basic idea is to use both and find a better informed overall forecast. The predictions are combined using a shrinkage estimator, where the predictions are weighted by their respective prediction uncertainty. The uncertainty of the poll prediction is modelled time dependent. The result is a dynamic model allowing for predictions long before the elections highly relying on fundamental variables. With the elections coming closer predictions rely more and more on the polling data.

Kernel-based semiparametric multinomial logit modelling of political party preferences

Conventional, parametric multinomial logit models are in general not sufficient for detecting the complex patterns voter profiles nowadays typically exhibit. In this manuscript, we use a semiparametric multinomial logit model to give a detailed analysis of the composition of a subsample of the German electorate in 2006. Germany is a particularly strong case for more flexible nonparametric approaches in this context, since due to the reunification and the preceding different political histories the composition of the electorate is very complex and nuanced. Our analysis reveals strong interactions of the covariates age and income, and highly nonlinear shapes of the factor impacts for each party's likelihood to be voted. Notably, we develop and provide a smoothed likelihood estimator for semiparametric multinomial logit models, which can be applied also in other application fields, such as, e.g., marketing.

European Integration and Party Competition in German Federal Elections

Europe has been hit by a global financial crisis, and so has Germany. This crisis is associated, among European Union citizens, with the degree of support for European integration: those who are skeptical about the Euro and the debt crises in parts of the Eurozone tend also to be skeptical about European integration more generally. Our main question in this article is whether the pledges of political parties (as issued in their election manifestos) can add to our understanding of electoral choices in Germany. Relating German election results to the German data provided by the Comparative Manifesto Project MRG/CMP/MARPOR research tradition, our expectation is that political parties' European pledges have been irrelevant for the vote over half a century. Now that the European Union is rapidly moving in its postfunctional phase, the election of 2013 is expected to mark a turning point in that regard.

Interpreting Partisan Dealignment in Germany

Partisan ties in Germany have been weakening over the past three decades, which is changing the landscape of electoral politics. In contrast to a recent article by Dassonneville et al. in this journal, this article argues that a generational decline in partisanship is contributing to this dealignment trend, and virtually all of the new independents are more sophisticated apartisans who are politically engaged even though they lack party ties. These findings are based on the 1972–2009 time series of surveys by the Forschungsgruppe Wahlen. The results point to a more sophisticated German electorate that will inject more fluidity into electoral politics and empower more Germans to make reasonable electoral choices.

NOT MUCH ADO ABOUT QUITE A LOT? THE GERMAN ELECTION OF SEPTEMBER 2013

The German election of 22 September 2013 saw Angela Merkel's CDU/CSU return triumphantly to office. Merkel's party won as she is widely admired and, most importantly, she is widely trusted to lead Germany through potentially challenging times. So, all much as was. Yet beneath the surface the tectonic plates of German party politics are shifting. The Social Democrats appear to be stuck in an electoral trough, whilst the number of politically relevant smaller parties is increasing. Although the liberal FDP failed to re-enter parliament for the first time in post-war history, and both the Pirates and Alternative for Germany (AfG) also fell at the final (5%) hurdle, the era of multi-party politics is now well and truly with us. The CDU/CSU and SPD will lead Germany until 2017, but the story of what happens then really is anyone's guess.

Германия и реформы ЕС

Germany is playing a key role in the resolution of the EU crisis. Berlin has not only proposed changes in the economic and finance spheres, but also the initiation of the political reform of the EU. However, for several reasons, starting from the middle of 2013 there has been a serious shift in emphasis from the creation of a political union to the construction of an EU banking union. Angela Merkel’s victory in German elections increased the country’s European political activity, and Berlin announced new initiatives which involved amendments to fundamental EU agreements. At the same time, German European policy aims to strengthen the position of nation states in the future European integration, and slightly reduce the role of the European Commission. Here one can see a certain level of convergence between the German and British positions. However, as Angela Merkel’s visit to London in February 2014 demonstrated, the interests of the two countries in the EU are hardly compatible. To other EU countries, Germany’s leadership in the EU seems to favor German interests at the expense of other partners. The questions whether EU countries will still follow Germany’s European political direction and whether they are able to implement the necessary reforms in their own countries as well as in the EU remain open and foster Euroscepticism.

The Chronicle of German Electoral System: Politics of Institutional Evolution

The Chronicle of German Electoral System: Politics of Institutional Evolution

The European Financial Transaction Tax: Update

The authors consider the most recent developments with regard to the European financial transaction tax, specifically following the legal opinion of the Council’s Legal Services and the German elections.

German elections: more of the same?

As Germany's citizens prepare to vote in elections for the Bundestag, its European counterparts are paying closer attention than in previous years. But just as this election campaign has failed to spark much enthusiasm domestically, so its impact on Europe might be similarly anti-climactic.

Editor's Introduction for Forecasting the 2013 German Elections

In the past 40 years an extensive literature has grown up around aggregate political economy models of elections, but few articles have focused on the German case. Initially, Kirchgässner (1977; 1991), developed vote-popularity (VP) functions, with the unemployment rate as the dominant economic variable predicting the German ruling parties' performance. Thereafter, using vote functions (VF) from 1961 to 1994, Jérôme, Jérôme-Speziari, and Lewis-Beck (2001) tested the “yardstick” competition existing between French and German economic votes.

A Political-Economy Forecast for the 2013 German Elections: Who to Rule with Angela Merkel?

Our political economy model has correctly forecasted the 1998 and 2005 elections. However, in 2002 we predicted a tight race to the benefit of the Christian Democrats(CDU)/Christian Socialists(CSU)-Free Democratic Party (FDP) opposition, so underestimating the narrow defeat of the FDP by the Green Party. In the German political system, proportional representation makes single-party domination almost impossible. On the contrary, the big parties, Social Democratic Party (SPD) or CDU/CSU, are pushed to build a majority coalition. In this competition, the FDP has been the “pivotal party” in German political life, at least until 2002. Since then, the Greens have challenged the FDP, with the Ecologists allowing the SPD to form a red-green coalition in 1998 and in 2002. Similarly, in 2005 the FDP was not associated with the grand coalition driven by Angela Merkel.