German Election Research Articles

Chancellor Model Picks Merkel in 2013 German Election

In the German national election this fall, based on the forecast of the Chancellor Model, the governing coalition will score a resounding victory. Chancellor Angela Merkel enjoys a high approval rating, which puts her at a 2-1 advantage over the challenger, Peer Steinbrück. Although Germany is not a presidential system, where voters elect the chief policymaker, chancellor support has proved to be a strong predictor of vote choice in German national elections. Our forecast model also includes long-term partisanship, which provides a broad base for the governing parties in this election, and length of tenure, which exacts a modest penalty after two terms of office. Since its premiere in 2002, the model has predicted the winner in each election. In a case of perhaps beginner's luck, the 2002 forecast scored a bull's-eye with 47.1%, the exact share of the governing parties; the forecast was posted three months before Election Day. No poll or other model, not even the Election-Day exit polls, came close to this performance; in fact, most people predicted a defeat for Schröder's red-green coalition (Norpoth and Gschwend 2003).

Strategic, Structural, and Individual Determinants of Online Campaigning in German Elections

AbstractThis article analyzes various strategic, structural, and individual factors that explain the use of online campaigning in Germany, comparing their relative importance as explanatory variables in national, state, and local elections. Based on candidate surveys of three German elections (at national, state, and local levels) in 2009 and 2010, the results show that strategic and structural variables, such as party membership or the perceived share of indecisive voters, do most to explain online campaigning. Internet‐related perceptions are explanatory in a few cases at the state and local levels; if candidates think that other candidates campaign online they feel obliged to use online media during the election campaign. However, genuine political predictors are still very significant at all federal levels.

Online Campaigning in Germany: The CDU Online Campaign for the General Election 2009 in Germany

The German election year 2009 saw the first attempts by political parties to include Web 2.0 services in their online campaigns. The 2009 election therefore offers the opportunity to examine how political parties outside the USA – where online campaigning has become commonplace – choose to use online tools in their campaigns. This paper examines the online campaign of the German Christian Democratic Union (CDU) with a special focus on the campaign's use of Web 2.0 services. The different elements of the campaign will be discussed with regard to three basic functions of online campaigning provided by the relevant literature: 1) presence in the online information space; 2) support of the infrastructure of politics; 3) creation of symbols for political support and participation. This paper shows that these functions were all present in the CDU's use of online tools in the campaign of 2009.

Campaign Activation in German Elections: Evidence from 2005 and 2009

This paper investigates the activation of electoral “fundamentals” in German Bundestag campaigns with evidence from 2005 and 2009. We show that the economy, party identification, and ideology are liable to activation but not in the same ways and not necessarily at the same time. Rather, activation is conditional on context and was altogether greater in the conventionally partisan election of 2005 than in 2009, when party differences were muted. The mechanisms of activation are mixed, with self-persuasion being at least as important as priming.

"Spin Zones" in American Presidential Elections

"Spin Zones" in American Presidential Elections

Voting when the economy goes bad, everyone is in charge, and no one is to blame: The case of the 2009 German election

The economy was a major issue in Germany’s 2009 election. The global economic crisis did not spare Germany, whose economy is tightly integrated into the global economy. So when the German economy experienced a historical shock, did voters connect their views of the economy with their vote choice? Or did they, as some research has suggested, recognize Germany’s dependence on global markets and cut the government slack, especially when the government consists of the country’s two major parties? Using pre- and post-election panel surveys from the German Longitudinal Election Study (GLES), we investigate the weight that voters gave to the economy, relative to other considerations, when casting their ballot and whether governing parties were disproportionately judged based on the state of the economy.

Coalition type and voter support for parties: Grand coalitions in German elections

While scholars have generally acknowledged that coalition governments are less accountable to voters than single party majorities, surprisingly little differentiation is made among different types of coalition governments. In this paper, we examine voter support for two very different types of coalition governments: those with a single large party and a junior partner and grand coalitions—governing coalitions between two large but ideologically dissimilar parties. We argue that grand coalitions differ from the more typical senior–junior partners in terms of the ability of individual parties to respond to their constituencies. We test this argument using survey data from four German Election Studies (GES), before and after each of the two German grand coalitions (1965, 1969, 2005, and 2009), which provide a unique opportunity to compare voter support for grand coalitions to those of the more typical senior–junior party model. We find evidence that voters responded to grand coalitions by moving away from their traditional voting patterns, and increasing their support for parties outside of the grand coalition, although this effect varies by the number of alternative parties.

Apartisans and the changing German electorate

The concept of party identification is central to our understanding of electoral behavior. This paper builds upon the functional logic of party identification and asks what occurs when more Germans manage the complexities of politics without needing to rely on habitual party cues—what we label as Apartisans. We track the distribution of party mobilization and cognitive mobilization within the German electorate from 1976 until 2009. Then, we demonstrate the importance of these mobilization patterns by documenting strong differences in electoral commitment, the content of political thinking, and electoral change. The results suggest a secular transformation in the characteristics of the public has led to a more differentiated and dealigned German electorate.

Why the Pirate Party Won the German Election of 2009 or The Trouble With Predictions: A Response to Tumasjan, A., Sprenger, T. O., Sander, P. G., & Welpe, I. M. “Predicting Elections With Twitter: What 140 Characters Reveal About Political Sentiment”

In their article “Predicting Elections with Twitter: What 140 Characters Reveal About Political Sentiment,” the authors Andranik Tumasjan, Timm O. Sprenger, Philipp G. Sandner, and Isabell M. Welpe (TSSW) the authors claim that it would be possible to predict election outcomes in Germany by examining the relative frequency of the mentions of political parties in Twitter messages posted during the election campaign. In this response we show that the results of TSSW are contingent on arbitrary choices of the authors. We demonstrate that as of yet the relative frequency of mentions of German political parties in Twitter message allows no prediction of election results.

Does ticket-splitting decrease the accuracy of recalled previous voting? Evidence from three German panel surveys

This paper addresses the role of ticket-splitting in decreasing the accuracy of recalled previous voting. It suggests that ticket-splitting makes recalling vote choice a more difficult task and thus increases recall error. Using data from three German panel surveys conducted from 1998 to 2008, the paper demonstrates that ticket-splitting increases recall error by a considerable margin, even after controlling for behavioral and attitudinal predictors. This finding suggests that recall accuracy is not a stable voter characteristic. It also lends credence to the notion that the increase in ticket-splitting in recent German elections decreased the accuracy of recalled previous voting. Finally, the evidence suggests that electoral systems affect the validity of survey answers concerning previous vote choice.

Forecasting elections with mere recognition from small, lousy samples: A comparison of collective recognition, wisdom of crowds, and representative polls

AbstractWe investigated the extent to which the human capacity for recognition helps to forecast political elections: We compared naïve recognition-based election forecasts computed from convenience samples of citizens’ recognition of party names to (i) standard polling forecasts computed from representative samples of citizens’ voting intentions, and to (ii) simple—and typically very accurate—wisdom-of-crowds-forecasts computed from the same convenience samples of citizens’ aggregated hunches about election results. Results from four major German elections show that mere recognition of party names forecast the parties’ electoral success fairly well. Recognition-based forecasts were most competitive with the other models when forecasting the smaller parties’ success and for small sample sizes. However, wisdom-of-crowds-forecasts outperformed recognition-based forecasts in most cases. It seems that wisdom-of-crowds-forecasts are able to draw on the benefits of recognition while at the same time avoiding its downsides, such as lack of discrimination among very famous parties or recognition caused by factors unrelated to electoral success. Yet it seems that a simple extension of the recognition-based forecasts—asking people what proportion of the population would recognize a party instead of whether they themselves recognize it—is also able to eliminate these downsides.

The Issue Voting Triangle: How Issue Linkage, Issue Competition and Issue Mobilization Facilitate Issue Voting

Why do some new policy issues influence voters’ decisions at the ballot box while others do not? This study develops and tests arguments about the way in which supply-side factors, i.e. the behavioral characteristics of political parties, mediate the extent to which new and complex policy issues affect voting behavior. Specifically, it proposes a model, i.e. the issue voting triangle, that draws attention to three supply-side factors that explain variation in issue voting: (1) issue linkage, (2) issue mobilization and (3) issue competition. The degree of issue voting is expected to vary as a result of the linkage between parties’ positions on the new policy issue and the main dimension of political conflict (issue linkage), the extent to which parties take diverging stances on the new issue (issue competition) and the degree to which parties view the new issue as important (issue mobilization). These general propositions are tested by examining the impact of the European integration issue on vote choice in British, Danish, Dutch and German elections between 1992 and 2002. The empirical analysis demonstrates that issue voting on the basis of a new and complex policy issue is indeed more prominent when the three issue voting triangle conditions are present. Consequently, this study has crucial implications for the study of elections and voting behavior and enriches our understanding of the issue voting process.

The German Elections in the 1870s: Why Germany Turned from Liberalism to Protectionism

In 1878 the liberal parties lost enough votes to lose the majority in the parliament which they had defended in the general election just one year before. In this article, the questions of where the voters came from and why the voting changed so crucially within one year are reexamined. The analysis uses a new set of data and makes use of King's algorithm, a tool provided by modern political science. The main finding of this article is that the change towards protectionism was not caused by new, but by floating voters from the agricultural sector.

EU Issue Voting: Asset or Liability?

This study develops and tests arguments about how political parties’ electoral fortunes in national elections are influenced by voters’ preferences regarding the European Union (EU). To date, there is increasing evidence demonstrating the impact of EU issues on vote choice in national elections — a process commonly referred to as EU issue voting. Yet little is known about which parties actually gain or lose as a result of EU issue voting. Using a two-step hierarchical estimation procedure, I first estimate an individual-level model of vote choice estimating the impact of EU preferences for individual parties. The first stage of the analysis reveals that the extent of EU issue voting varies substantially among political parties. In the second stage, I utilize party characteristics to account for this variation across parties by using an estimated dependent variable model. The analysis demonstrates that the inter-party variation in EU issue voting is largely a function of two factors: parties’ intrinsic positioning regarding the EU and strategic considerations. The empirical analysis employs data from UK, Danish, Dutch and German elections between 1992 and 2002.

The Participation of the German Länder in Formulating German EU-policy

On the 30 June 2009 the German Federal Constitutional Court (Bundesverfassungsgericht, FCC) has passed its long-awaited decision on the compatibility of the Act approving the Treaty of Lisbon and the accompanying legislation with the Basic law (Grundgesetz). The FCC's decision according to which the ratification law is compatible with the Basic law was greeted with relief by many German and European policy makers. It has removed another obstacle for the adoption of the Treaty of Lisbon in the European Union (EU), which still has to be ratified by Ireland, Poland and the Czech Republic, though. But also Germany's ratification still depends on the amendment of the accompanying “Act Extending and Strengthening the Rights of the Bundestag and the Bundesrat in European Union Matters” (“Extending Act”) which the FCC has declared incompatible with the Basic law insofar as the legislature, Bundestag and Bundesrat, have not been accorded sufficient rights of participation in European law-making and treaty amendment procedures. The FCC has therefore ruled that the Federal Republic of Germany's instrument of ratification of the Treaty of Lisbon may not be deposited as long as the constitutionally required legal elaboration of the parliamentary rights of participation has not entered into force. This puts pressure on German law-makers to amend the accompanying “Extending Act” possibly before the referendum in Ireland and before German elections in autumn 2009.

Party Election Programmes, Signalling Policies and Salience of Specific Policy Domains: The German Parties from 1990 to 2005

Parliaments and governments function as problem-solving institutions for specific policy domains. Due to the division of labour in governments, parties are interested in the stated policy priorities and the domain-specific positions of their possible coalition partners. This article investigates the coalition-relevant content of German election manifestos. Our goal is to identify policy domain-specific party positions and saliencies; we are less interested in the positions of parties on broadly defined ideological scales. Therefore, we present a new method of coding election manifestos. We partition manifestos into text corpora belonging to different policy domains by hand coding the titles the parties themselves have chosen for these sections. Section length is used as our measure of domain salience. We then estimate policy positions for these domains with the computerised content analysis algorithm WORDFISH. In this manner we estimate positions and saliencies of the German federal parties from 1990–2005. To validate our method, we compare our results with those of Slapin and Proksch and with results based on the CMP data.

The chancellor model: Forecasting German elections

Our forecast model for German Bundestag elections relies on three predictors: (1) the popularity of the incumbent chancellor (hence the christening of it as the “Chancellor Model”); (2) the long-term partisan balance in the German electorate; and (3) the cost of ruling, as captured by the tenure of the government in office. The model forecasts the vote share of the governing parties (typically two, such as Social Democrats and Greens, or Christian Democrats and Free Democrats), except for instances of a grand coalition. The coefficients of the predictors are estimated based on elections since 1949, the beginning of the Federal Republic. The out-of-sample forecasts of the model deviate from the actual results by just over one percentage point, on average. The first real-time test of the model came in 2002. The forecast issued three months before Election Day picked the incumbent vote share to the decimal (47.1% for the SPD-Greens coalition); for the 2005 election, called a year early, our forecast three weeks before Election Day was just three-tenths of a percentage off the mark. For the upcoming election, we offer separate forecasts, conditional at this moment, for each of the two parties in the grand coalition.

Strategic Voting under Proportional Representation: Threshold Insurance in German Elections

Does proportional representation imply incentives for strategic voting? This article investigates whether adherents of the major German parties voted against their preference in order to increase the chance of a majority coalition between their favourite party and the pre-electorally declared junior coalition partner. Focusing exclusively on the PR vote, the authors test whether strategic voting is guided by expectations with regard to the coalition formation stage. To that end they use a two-step estimation procedure to simultaneously predict (in-)complete party preferences and sincere and strategic voting in a random utility framework. Their results show that voters’ preferences, rather than mapping directly into party choice, are affected by their expectations on small parties’ re-entry chances.

Bread and the attrition of power: Economic events and German election results

Aggregate votes for incumbent parties in post-war Germany were determined by the weighted-average growth of real per capita disposable income. Each percentage point of per capita real disposable income growth sustained over the legislative term yielded approximately two percentage points of votes in Germany. No other economic variables add value or significantly perturb the coefficients of our model. However, attrition of power reduced the vote share in election years 1961, 1994 and 1998.

Modality and ENGAGEMENT in British and German political interviews

Speakers regulary use modality and other resources from the appraisal system of engagement to position themselves intersubjectively. In doing so, they modify the discursive space for the voices of others. This is particularly relevant in political media interviews, especially in questions with topics that are potentially face-threatening to the interviewees’ public face. This paper compares the use of modality and other engagement resources in British and German political interviews and discusses the differences in frequency and function. Data is taken from videotaped and transcribed political interviews conducted during British and German election night broadcasts. Their analysis is based on recent studies in contrastive pragmatics, appraisal theory and pragmatically oriented studies on media discourse, bearing in mind that cross-cultural comparison of data taken from a particular genre has to take into account a broad range of contextual factors including genre-specific constraints.