German Election Research Articles

Do campaign posters trigger voting based on looks? Probing an explanation for why good-looking candidates win more votes

Numerous studies document that better-looking candidates win more votes. Yet the causal mechanisms leading to this advantage remain unexplored. We consider for the first time a potential trigger of the looks–vote association that has previously been suggested but not tested in the literature: exposure to campaign posters of the candidates. We test this explanation with German election survey data, which we augment with ratings—provided by MTurk workers from the U.S.—of the attractiveness and facial competence of about 1,000 district candidates. Confirming previous studies on Germany, we find that attractiveness is positively associated with candidate vote share (1.2 ppts. min–max). At the voter level, we find tentative evidence for the idea that the association is moderated by exposure to campaign posters: effects are in the expected directions and their sizes consistent with what we observe at the candidate level, but we cannot always reject the null hypothesis of no effect. In contrast to attractiveness, we do not find conclusive evidence for an effect of facial competence in the election considered. These preliminary results suggest that inundating voters with candidate posters, as in elections in Germany and many other places, might be a reason for voting based on looks.

Book review: Voters & Voting in Context: Multiple Contexts and the Heterogeneous German Electorate

Book review: Voters & Voting in Context: Multiple Contexts and the Heterogeneous German Electorate

All the prime minister’s glory? Leader effects and accountability of prime ministers in parliamentary elections

Are prime ministers held accountable for their government’s performance? The personalisation of parliamentary elections and subsequent voting behaviour based on the personality of party leaders questions the accountability of elected governments. In this article, I analyse the confounding of prime ministers’ leader effects by voters’ evaluation of government performance to examine whether prime ministers are held accountable for the performance of their government. I use individual-level data from British, Danish, and German elections and a natural experiment at the German state level to show that voters hold prime ministers personally accountable. The findings constitute an important extension of electoral accountability and have implications for the study of personalisation and presidentialisation in parliamentary democracies.

From incidental exposure to intentional avoidance: Psychological reactance to political communication during the 2017 German national election campaign

This article deals with potential effects of incidental online exposure to political information (IOEP) on the German electorate during the 2017 national election campaign. We argue that the difference in currently unexpected and generally unwanted exposure to political online communication is crucial to the study of IOEP effects. While the former might result in “passive learning,” we hypothesize that–based on psychological reactance theory–the latter may be linked to defensive reactions with undesirable consequences among those who already are alienated from politics. Using cross-sectional data from an online survey among 1100 eligible voters, we can demonstrate that IOEP correlates with reactance in substantial segments. The study’s results are indicating, that the viral character of online campaigning may lead to the opposite of what was intended: voters are not only “trapped,” but might be repelled instead. Further empirical elaboration dealing with causal assumptions is encouraged.

Феномен растущей популярности партии «Альтернатива для Германии» в современной Европе

The article examines the ascent of the party «Alternative for Germany» (AFD) from its creation in 2012 to a sharp jump in popularity in the parliamentary elections in 2017. Special emphasis is paid to the review of the strengthening of Eurosceptic rhetoric, criticism of modern German politics as a result of the arrival of farright politicians to the leading positions in the party. The article concludes that Euroscepticism has become one of the components of the broad populist platform of the party as the AFD has developed. Moreover, it is established that unexpectedly high support for the AFD by the German electorate and the party’s acquisition of the status of the main opposition force in the Bundestag becomes an important factor for the German establishment in the context of defending its position on further deepening the processes of European integration.

Mehrheitswahl mit Verhältnisausgleich statt personalisierter Verhältniswahl. Ein alternativer Reformvorschlag zur Verkleinerung des Bundestags

The Federal German Electoral Law allots 299 constituency and 299 party list parliamentary seats or more . The personalized proportional representation (PR) system prescribes party list votes as the dominant principle of seat distribution . In this article a plurality system with additional PR seats is advocated . It would, for instance, fix the number of PR seats to 299 . Here three rules that are actually used in mixed‑member proportional systems are discussed: (1) Total negative vote transfer from candidate to party votes (scorporo totale in Italy), (2) partial negative vote transfer of only candidate votes that assured constituency victory (votes of first loser plus one), (3) applying d’Hondt to party votes for gaining PR seats by adding the number of gained constituency seats to the denominator of the sequential divisions (Scottish Parliament) . Contrafactual seat distributions based on the 2017 election results are computed . The thesis is that voters are guided primarily by their policy preferences when choosing parties and by leadership competence when choosing their local representative and indirectly the future chancellor .

Election Systems, the "Beauty Premium" in Politics, and the Beauty of Dissent

We ask three questions. First, do election systems differ in how they translate physical attractiveness of candidates into electoral success? Second, do political parties trategically exploit the “beauty premium” when deciding on which candidates to nominate, and, third, do elected MPs use their beauty premium to reap some independence from their party? Using the German election system that combines first-past-the-post election with party-list proportional representation, our results show that plurality elections provide more scope for translating physical attractiveness into electoral success than proportional representation. Whether political parties strategically use the beauty premium to optimize their electoral objectives is less clear. Physically attractive MPs, however, allow themselves to dissent more often, i.e. they vote more often against the party line than their less attractive peers.

What did you see? A study to measure personalization in Google\u2019s search engine

In this paper we present the results of the project “#Datenspende” where during the German election in 2017 more than 4000 people contributed their search results regarding keywords connected to the German election campaign.Analyzing the donated result lists we prove, that the room for personalization of the search results is very small. Thus the opportunity for the effect mentioned in Eli Pariser’s filter bubble theory to occur in this data is also very small, to a degree that it is negligible. We achieved these results by applying various similarity measures to the result lists that were donated. The first approach using the number of common results as a similarity measure showed that the space for personalization is less than two results out of ten on average when searching for persons and at most four regarding the search for parties. Application of other, more specific measures show that the space is indeed smaller, so that the presence of filter bubbles is not evident.Moreover this project is also a proof of concept, as it enables society to permanently monitor a search engine’s degree of personalization for any desired search terms. The general design can also be transferred to intermediaries, if appropriate APIs restrict selective access to contents relevant to the study in order to establish a similar degree of trustworthiness.

What are we missing? Explaining immigrant-origin voter turnout with standard and immigrant-specific theories

While the explanation of voter turnout is undoubtedly one of the major topics of electoral research, we know relatively little about how to explain the turnout of voters with an immigration background. Two perspectives can be distinguished. The first is that immigrant turnout can be explained by standard theories, i.e. those theories which are also used for native voters. In contrast, the second perspective highlights the role of immigrant-specific factors, such as ethnic networks, social identity patterns and discrimination experiences. In this research note, we test these perspectives against each other, relying on the most recent and high-quality survey data from the 2017 German federal election (the Immigrant German Election Study). In summary, we find that standard approaches can be used fruitfully to explain immigrant voter turnout in the 2017 German federal election, and immigrant-specific variables can add very little to them.

Germany’s Russia policy and geo-economics: Nord Stream 2, sanctions and the question of EU leadership towards Russia

ABSTRACTThis article contests the dominant view that Germany's leadership in the EU's foreign policy towards Russia since the eruption of the Ukraine crisis trumps its economic interests. It argues instead that it is the geo-economic nature of the Russo–German relationship that determines Germany's EU leadership towards Russia. To substantiate this claim, the article develops a framework that combines CDA with the theory of geo-economics, which captures the interrelation of geo-economics and foreign policy discourse, and allows us to discursively examine the development of Germany's Russia policy during the 2017 German elections and its aftermath. Central to this framework is the notion of reciprocal manipulation between business elites and political leaders within the realm of German foreign policy, in the context of punitive and reward-oriented forms of geo-economics. Empirically, the framework is applied to two case studies: the EU sanctions regime against Russia and the Nord Stream 2 project.

How do voters react when their party forms a coalition they dislike?

While coalitions are conventionally seen as opportunities for parties to realise their policy preferences or to secure their control over political offices, recent studies show that citizens have preferences for coalitions which influence their vote choice. However, these studies do not consider how party and coalition preferences influence each other. This study uses panel data from the German Longitudinal Election Study from the 2009, 2013 and 2017 German elections to determine whether voters punish the party for which they voted for being in a coalition they dislike or, alternatively, whether they become more supportive of that coalition. We find weak evidence for the former but strong evidence for the latter.

Endogenous testosterone correlates with parochial altruism in relation to costly punishment in different social settings.

Testosterone plays a key role in shaping human social behavior. Recent findings have linked testosterone to altruistic behavior in economic decision tasks depending on group membership and intergroup competition. The preferential treatment of ingroup members, while aggression and discrimination is directed towards outgroup members, has been referred to as parochial altruism. Here we investigated in two consecutive studies, whether testosterone is associated with parochial altruism depending on individual tendency for costly punishment. In the first study, 61 men performed a single-shot ultimatum game (UG) in a minimal group context, in which they interacted with members of an ingroup and outgroup. In the second study, 34 men performed a single-shot UG in a more realistic group context, in which they responded to the proposals of supporters of six political parties during the German election year 2017. Political parties varied in their social distance to the participants’ favorite party as indicated by an individual ranking. Participants of study 2 also performed a cued recall task, in which they had to decide whether they had already encountered a face during the previous UG (old-new decision). In order to make the UG data of study 2 most comparable to the data of study 1, the rejection rates of several parties were combined according to the social distance ranking they achieved. Parties ranked 1 to 3 formed the relatively close and favored ‘ingroup’ that shared similar political values with the participant (e.g., left wing parties), while the ‘outgroup’ consisted of parties ranked from 4 to 6 with more distant or even antagonistic political views (e.g., conservative to right wing parties). In both studies, results showed a parochial pattern with higher rejection rates made in response to outgroup compared to ingroup offers. Interestingly, across studies higher salivary testosterone was associated with higher rejection rates related to unfair outgroup offers in comparison to the unfair offers made by ingroup members. The present findings suggest that latent intergroup biases during decision-making may be positively related to endogenous testosterone. Similar to previous evidence that already indicated a role of testosterone in shaping male parochial altruism in male soccer fans, these data underscore the general, yet rather subtle role of male testosterone also in other social settings.

Who Wants to Talk About Refugees and Why? Foreign Interventions in German Elections

We use this the crisis set off by the arrival of asylum-seekers in Germany to test a theory of the use of propaganda as a strategy by a non-democratic state against a democratic state. We argue that a non-democracy on a collision course with a democracy will use propaganda discourse to punish recalcitrant elite, and will do so especially near elections while promoting frames that weaken the opponent’s institutions. We test these propositions on a corpus of half a million publications, covering Kremlin-backed media channels broadcasting in German, and German media. We find that Kremlin-backed channels are more likely to publish refugee stories near elections in Germany and that they push conspiracy theories at the expense of discussing economic or crime-related aspects of immigration. Our work has implications for the rise of propaganda discourse in Europe and beyond, and for democratic politics under foreign autocratic pressure.

All in the game: Effects of opinion polls on party coverage in the 2013 German election campaign

Opinion polls form an important part of modern election coverage but might also shape amount and tone of other subsequent coverage about political parties. We propose to use and elaborate on Patterson’s generic storylines to help account for different findings in prior research, by pointing to the importance of race context. A manual content analysis (N = 3755) of the 2013 German Bundestag election campaign is used to empirically test our framework, using a multilevel model that separates effects of 36 polls on coverage of five different parties in 11 different outlets. Results show that the amount of party coverage for the front runner party increased after drops in its ratings, and the challenger party received more negative coverage after increases in its poll ratings. Media coverage did not follow a bandwagon trend but played an independent and counteracting role within the election campaign.

On the Ethics of Algorithmic Intelligence

On the Ethics of Algorithmic Intelligence Roberto Simanowski (bio) Translated by Michel Brodmer and Jefferson Chase "perhaps the new intelligence will worship its creators, perhaps it will keep us as pets, or perhaps it will erase us. We simply don't know. What is certain is that if my arguments are correct we will lose control over evolution" (Gumbrecht 2018, 227). Those are the words of 21-yearold Sam Ginn, a student of computer science and comparative literature at Stanford University, who has set himself the task of inventing an artificial consciousness that understands its own existence in the world. His rather pessimistic assertion about what might result if he succeeds is contained in Weltgeist im Silicon Valley, a book by Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, a professor of comparative literature at Stanford. The Weltgeist, or world-spirit, that Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel saw embodied in 1806 by Napoleon riding through the university town of Jena, after defeating German troops, lives on 200 years later in California. The geopolitical transition from Central Europe to the American West Coast is simultaneously a change from the political to the scientific. The future no longer rests with politics or even the philosophy of Plato's Republic. It rests with science, as in Francis Bacon's Nova Atlantis, or more precisely, with computer science. We no longer have people like Napoleon revolutionizing their times with military campaigns or a Code civil. Instead it's people like Sundar Pichai and Mark Zuckerberg who, every day, with every new piece of data, increasingly determine the future we're rushing toward. Politicians are completely satisfied with this transition of power. If in times of post-political consensus all that matters is the administration of the established order, what they expect from progress [End Page 423] is above all more effective forms of such administration. It is thus hardly surprising that those in power embrace the digital revolution, or at least refrain from expressing any doubts or passing any laws when business demands that everything be bet "on a single card, the digital one"—as the president of Bitkom, Germany's Association for IT, Telecommunications, and New Media, said in the summer of 2017. The business-friendly Free Democratic Party (FDP) even campaigned in the 2017 German election with the slogan "Digital first, doubts second" (Digital first, Bedenken second). This sort of optimism vis-à-vis the future has complete faith in science. As Theresa May told the World Economic Forum in Davos in 2018: "Imagine a world in which self-driving cars radically reduce the number of deaths on our roads. Imagine a world where remote monitoring and inspection of critical infrastructure make dangerous jobs safer. Imagine a world where we can predict and prevent the spread of diseases around the globe" (May 2018). True believers justify their confidence with numbers. May said: "We have seen a new AI start-up created in the UK every week for the last three years. And we are investing in the skills these start-ups need, spending £45 million to support additional PhDs in AI and related disciplines." This is completely in keeping with the myopia of the post-political dogma that the future will be determined not by societal discussions but by quantifiable investments and innovations. But to what extent does the future truly reside in the hands of the science and start-ups May praises so fulsomely? Do scientists and entrepreneurs consciously decide, after possibly discussing the consequences, which inventions they will produce and support? Do they have the power to tell society how scientific achievements like splitting the atom or decoding DNA will be used? Do they abide by social imperatives not to engage in research whose consequences cannot be anticipated or controlled? Or would they seek out a society with other moral standards and legal regulations—perhaps on an artificial extraterritorial island financed by venture capitalist Peter Thiel's Seasteading Institute? And what should we think of the fact that in the case of artificial intelligence, the threat of unforeseen consequences [End Page 424] is no longer restricted to irresponsible usage of the invention, but includes the prospect that the invention might keep its inventors as pets instead of...

The year of Macron and Merkel. What are the achievements of the German-French partnership?

Współpraca między Francją i Niemcami ma kluczowe znaczenie dla przyszłości Unii Europejskiej. Osłabiona po wyborach w 2017 r. długotrwałymi negocjacjami koalicyjnymi kanclerz Merkel spóźniła się z udzieleniem odpowiedzi na propozycje reform w UE prezydenta E. Macrona. Wprowadzono zaledwie kilka poprawek dotyczących europejskiej polityki obronnej i dyrektywy w sprawie delegowania pracowników. Ważniejsze tematy, w tym europejska polityka finansowa, są wciąż żywo debatowane. W obliczu obecnych trudności i silnych zastrzeżeń ze strony konserwatywnej części CDU i CSU dla polityki europejskiej rządu, wydaje się, że Merkel jest na dobrej drodze do osiągnięcia pragmatycznego kompromisu z Francją.

Comparative Models in German Elections: Using the German Far-Right Party as a Proxy for Ethnic Conflict

Comparative Models in German Elections: Using the German Far-Right Party as a Proxy for Ethnic Conflict

The Political Economy of Higher Education Finance: How Information and Design Affect Public Preferences for Tuition

Public preferences for charging tuition are important for determining higher education finance. To test whether public support for tuition depends on information and design, we devise several survey experiments in representative samples of the German electorate (N>19,500). The electorate is divided, with a slight plurality opposing tuition. Providing information on the university earnings premium raises support for tuition by 7 percentage points, turning the plurality in favor. The opposition-reducing effect persists two weeks after treatment. Information on fiscal costs and unequal access does not affect public preferences. Designing tuition as deferred income-contingent payments raises support by 16 percentage points, creating a strong majority favoring tuition. The same effect emerges when framed as loan payments. Support decreases with higher tuition levels and increases when targeted at non-EU students.

The body politic: Gender, the right wing and ‘identity category violations’

The post-Brexit, post-Trump climate in the EU has seen a series of challenges from the right wing of politics to the liberal consensus of recent years (e.g. the rise of Gert Wilders in the Netherlands and the increased support for Alternativ für Deutschland in the 2017 German election). This article examines the gendering and embodiment of the new far right in France and the UK. It offers a comparative focus on two recent political challengers from the right who are female: Marine Le Pen (born 1968), the leader of the Front national in France since 2011, and Anne Marie Waters (born 1977), the Islam-critical candidate who was runner-up for the UK Independence Party (UKIP) leadership in the UK in 2017, and who has since started her own political party, For Britain. The article focuses on media coverage of, and self-representation by, these two figures. It argues that the discourse of the ‘right’ and ‘left’ wings has, historically, been gendered on the basis of assumptions that women are naturally more inclined towards consensus-building, collectivity and compassion (and therefore left-wing politics), by dint of their biological function as child-bearers and traditional gender role as care-givers. Right-leaning women have been treated as anomalies, by both feminist political analysts and the mainstream media. Feminist concerns over the very existence of right-wing women is suggested by books such as second-wave feminist Andrea Dworkin’s Right-Wing Women (1983), the more recent edited collection by Paola Bacchetta and Margaret Power, also called Right-Wing Women (2013) and, in the French context, Claudie Lesselier and Fiametta Venner’s L’Extrême Droite et les femmes (1997). Le Pen and Waters appear as doubly aberrant, doubly exceptional figures – firstly as (far-)right-wing women and secondly as (far-)right-wing female leaders. The article considers the stakes of our categorical understandings of (gendered and political) identity more broadly. Specifically, by introducing the original critical concept of ‘identity category violation’, it analyses the ways in which the recent trend for identity politics on the left in the West, often under the banner of ‘intersectionality’, leads to over-simplified understandings of how categories of gendered, sexual, class and race-based identities are assumed to determine political affiliation.

Channelling attention and choice? Examining effects of consideration sets on electoral decision-making

This article sheds light on the utility of consideration set modeling in analyzing electoral decision-making in multi-party systems against the background of the German federal election in 2013. The results show that large portions of the German electorate choose a party comprised by their consideration set over the course of the campaign. The size of consideration sets does not precipitously decline as Election Day approaches, however. The analysis also suggests that the composition of voters' consideration sets slightly affects their exposure to campaign communication and their evaluation of campaign events and gaffes. Finally, the evidence demonstrates that consideration sets virtually did not condition the impact of campaign reception and evaluations of campaign events on voting behavior. The overall results suggest that consideration set modeling deserves further exploration in future research.