The AfD succeeded in the German election by mobilising non-voters on the right

Last Sunday's German federal elections marked a significant break in Germany's post-war history. For the first time since the immediate post-war period, a far-right party entered the Bundestag. With 13 of the seats, the populist anti-immigration party, Alternative for Germany (AfD), has become the third largest party in the German parliament. A key to the success of the AfD was its ability to mobilise previous nonvoters to turn out, write Julian Hoerner and Sara Hobolt

Determining the Level of Knowledge of UND College Women in Their Childbearing Years Regarding Exercise during Pregnancy

With an increase in the number of pregnant women exercising, there is an increased need for patient education and the distribution of updated guidelines to promote appropriate exercise activities. PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to determine the level of knowledge in English-speaking, college women in their childbearing years attending the University of North Dakota regarding the risks, precautionary measures and recommended modes of exercise during pregnancy. SUBJECTS & METHODS: Eighty-four women between the ages of 18 and 40 enrolled in the summer school session completed a thirty-one question survey. The survey was used to gather information about the training needs of college women regarding their understanding of risk factors associated with participating in exercise during pregnancy. RESULTS: It was found that the women had a significantly low level of knowledge of the risks, precautionary measures, and modes of exercise during pregnancy. It was also found that the women had a significantly lower amount of knowledge ofthe risks (X=32.59 +/ -20.44, p\u3c.OOI), as compared to the precautionary measures (X=49.7 +/ -20.90, p\u3c.OOI) or modes of exercise (X=45.54 +/-24.75, p\u3c.OOI). CONCLUSION: College women between the ages of 18 and 40 do not have a good understanding concerning the risks of exercise, precautionary measures to be implemented, and recommended modes of exercise associated with pregnancy. DISCUSSION: The low scores may be contributed to factors such as no previous experience( s) of pregnancy or the size of city in which the participants had lived the longest. The information obtained from this study may guide the development of appropriate educational tools and instructional protocols, and may serve as a precursor for future research

Unity in diversity? Polarization, issue diversity and satisfaction with democracy

How do the range of issues voters care about and party system polarization impact democratic outcomes? Recent debates have focused on the negative effect of polarized systems on democratic quality. However, the extent to which this polarization is channeled or diffused over a wide range of issues on the public agenda has not been analyzed systematically. Using data from 31 European countries from 2003 to 2018, we show that party polarization indeed has a negative effect on people's satisfaction with democracy. Importantly, however, we demonstrate that at high levels of issue diversity, the negative effect of polarization is minimized. Drawing on the deliberative democracy literature, we argue that at low levels of issue diversity, polarization makes compromise in society less likely and the political discourse more antagonistic. However, at higher levels of issue diversity, contestation and conflict can be diffused over a large range of issues, providing more favorable conditions for collective will formation and, ultimately, higher levels of satisfaction with democracy

Having a say or getting your way? Political choice and satisfaction with democracy

Citizen satisfaction with democracy is greater when parties offer choices that are congruent with voter preferences. But are citizens content with simply having a party that represents their views or does their satisfaction depend on whether that party can also be instrumental in implementing policies? We argue that instrumentality moderates the effect of ideological congruence on democratic satisfaction. Combining an analysis of cross-national survey data with an experimental conjoint design, we find that citizens able to vote for a congruent party with a chance of entering government are more satisfied with democracy, whereas congruence without instrumentality has no such effect

Having a say or getting your way? Political choice and satisfaction with democracy

Supplementary materials files: online appendix; replication data.Citizen satisfaction with democracy is greater when parties offer choices that are congruent with voterpreferences. But are citizens content with simply having a party that represents their views or does their satisfactiondepend on whether that party can also be instrumental in implementing policies? We argue that instrumentalitymoderates the effect of ideological congruence on democratic satisfaction. Combining an analysis of cross-nationalsurvey data with an experimental conjoint design, we find that citizens able to vote for a congruent party with achance of entering government are more satisfied with democracy, whereas congruence without instrumentality hasno such effect.The research for this paper was generously supported by the European Research Council (ERCGA 647835, EUDEMOS). We are grateful to Tarik Abou-Chadi, Chris Anderson, Sebastian Barfort, Catherine De Vries and Moritz Osnabrügge and the participants at the LSE Government Department Colloquium, the CSES and LSE EUDEMOS workshops and at the APSA and EPSA annual meetings for insightful comments on previous versions of this paper

An open carbon–phenolic ablator for scientific exploration

Abstract Space exploration missions rely on ablative heat shields for the thermal protection of spacecraft during atmospheric entry flights. While dedicated research is needed for future missions, the scientific community has limited access to ablative materials typically used in aerospace. In this paper, we report the development of the HEFDiG Ablation-Research Laboratory Experiment Material (HARLEM), a carbon–phenolic ablator designed to supply the need for ablative materials in laboratory experiments. HARLEM is manufactured using polyacrylonitrile-based carbon fiber preforms and a simplified processing route for phenolic impregnation. We characterized the thermal protection performance of HARLEM in arcjet experiments conducted in the plasma wind tunnel PWK1 of the Institute of Space Systems at the University of Stuttgart. We assessed the performance of the new material by measuring surface recession rate and temperature using photogrammetry and thermography setups during the experiments, respectively. Our results show that HARLEM’s thermal protection performance is comparable to legacy carbon–phenolic ablators that have been validated in different arcjet facilities or in-flight, as demonstrated by calculations of the effective heat of ablation and scanning electron microscopy of as-produced samples. In-house manufacturing of carbon–phenolic ablators enables the addition of embedded diagnostics to ablators, allowing for the acquisition of data on internal pressure and more sophisticated pyrolysis analysis techniques