A micro perspective on political competition: Electoral availability in the European electorates

This article develops an empirical measure of electoral availability, i.e., the micro perspective of political competition. As existing research conceptualizes political competition mainly as a macro- or party-level phenomenon, the micro perspective remains underdeveloped and, therefore, an important dimension of political competition, the availability of votes, is ignored. We introduce and discuss an individualized measure of electoral competition that is based on propensities to vote as indicators of the availability of voters to different political parties. The theoretical and empirical advantages of this measure are discussed: it is not restricted to parties’ positions but is based on multidimensional party evaluations; it does not only focus on actual behavior but instead on the potential behavior of voters; the proposed measure takes all (relevant) parties into account instead of only including the two largest parties; as a continuous index it avoids arbitrary cut-off points; and the resulting individual-level results are easily summable to obtain party- and country-level values. Finally, correlations with individual, party and party system characteristics are discussed

Becoming part of the gang? Established and nonestablished populist parties and the role of external efficacy

In this article, we examine the extent to which the influence of external efficacy on support for populist parties is conditional on the degree to which a populist party is an established player in a given party system. We do so using a two-step regression approach that allows us to investigate the varying effect of external efficacy in a multilevel setting. Making use of data on 23 European Union member states, we empirically demonstrate that the nature of support for populists varies depending on the extent to which these parties are established actors in their national party systems. This is true for Western and Eastern European populist parties. These findings make an important contribution to the broader literature on the success and survival of populist parties. They indicate that these parties do not keep up their image as radical opponents of the national political establishment the more they become electorally successful and join government coalitions

Germany Going Postal? Comparing Postal and Election Day Voters in the 2017 German Federal Election

The proportion of voters casting their votes by mail days or even weeks before election day has risen from initially five per cent to nearly thirty per cent in the 2017 German federal election. At the same time, the differences in election results between postal and election day voters are increasing, reaching a record at the Bundestag election in 2017. Against this background, it seems particularly surprising that there are only a small number of empirical studies on postal voting in Germany. For an evaluation (of the development) of postal voting, it is crucial to investigate the factors responsible for the different election results between the two voter groups. This requires more precise knowledge of postal voters and how they differ from voters who cast their ballots on election day. Using data from the German Longitudinal Election Study (GLES), we investigate in how far composition effects - differences between the voter types in the composition of factors potentially relevant for party choice - and association effects - differences regarding their vote functions or criteria applied for vote choice - can help to explain the different electoral outcomes. We conclude that the voter types do not differ substantially from each other with regards to their decision criteria but that their composition differs with regards to certain characteristics relevant for party choice

A New Player in the Game: Changing Electoral Competition in Germany

This chapter asks how electoral competition changed from 2013 to 2017 in East and West Germany. Following Sartori's understanding of party systems as systems of interactions resulting from inter-party competition, it focuses on the content-related properties of the German party system. Combining data from the GLES 2013 and 2017 voter and candidate surveys, it investigates, first, the extent of electoral competition in terms of overlapping electoral support of party pairs and, second, how the establishment of the AfD changed the substantial structure underlying electoral competition in East and West Germany. Findings suggest that electoral competition in Germany is best described as three-dimensional. Whereas regional differences result from different voter preferences regarding policy issues, temporal differences are essentially the result of the changing relevance of the socio-economic and socio-cultural issue dimensions but also a newly emerged populist-pluralist divide

Putting electoral competition where it belongs: comparing vote-based measures of electoral competition

Electoral competition is a cornerstone of representative democracies. However, measuring its extent and intensity constitutes a challenging task for the discipline. Based on multilevel conceptualizations, we discuss three different measures of political competition (electoral volatility, vote switching, and voters' availability) and their relation to each other. We argue that electoral volatility and vote switching as indicators of electoral competitiveness tend to misestimate the degree of competition in multiparty systems. As an alternative, we propose focusing on the individual’s propensity to vote for different parties, i.e. electoral availability. Using data provided by the European Election Studies, we compare availability to electoral volatility and vote switching in the framework of necessary and sufficient conditions. Our regression results show that operationalizing electoral competitiveness based on voter availability - which is increasingly retrievable from cross-national voter surveys - helps to avoid type-II errors, i.e. identifying competitive elections as less or non-competitive

Do parties perceive their voter potentials correctly? Reconsidering the spatial logic of electoral competition

Political parties strive for maximizing their vote shares. One way to achieve this goal is to attract voters from competitors. A precondition for strategies aiming at attracting these voters is that parties perceive their voter potentials among their rivals' electorates correctly. Yet, hardly anything is known about such perceptions. To fill this gap, we develop analogue measures of a party's perceived and its actual voter potential for each competitor in a party system. Combining elite and mass surveys conducted in Germany, we show that perceived and actual voter potentials depend on spatial considerations but also that not all parties are able to correctly evaluate their potentials. These deviations can be traced back to differences in the perceived placement of political actors between elites and citizens. This supports the spatial logic of party competition but it also points to potential pitfalls for strategic behavior of political parties

The Accuracy of Job Seekers' Wage Expectations

Job seekers' misperceptions about the labor market can distort their decision-making and increase the risk of long-term unemployment. Our study establishes objective benchmarks for the subjective wage expectations of unemployed workers. This enables us to provide novel insights into the accuracy of job seekers' wage expectations. First, especially workers with low objective earnings potential tend to display excessively optimistic beliefs about their future wages and anchor their wage expectations too strongly to their pre-unemployment wages. Second, among long-term unemployed workers, overoptimism remains persistent throughout the unemployment spell. Third, higher extrinsic incentives to search more intensively lead job seekers to hold more optimistic wage expectations, yet this does not translate into higher realized wages for them. Lastly, we document a connection between overoptimistic wage expectations and job seekers' tendency to overestimate their reemployment chances. We discuss the role of information frictions and motivated beliefs as potential sources of job seekers' optimism and the heterogeneity in their beliefs

Auf dem Weg in die Post-Demokratie?

Viele Wahlberechtigte wählen inzwischen per Brief. Corona befeuert die Diskussion um das Für und Wider dieser Option. Führt Briefwahl zu einer höheren und sozial ausgewogeneren Wahlbeteiligung? Welche Parteien profitieren

Wählen in der Pandemie: Herausforderungen und Konsequenzen

Die Herausforderungen durch das Coronavirus erfassen alle Lebensbereiche, nicht zuletzt die Politik im "Superwahljahr" 2021. Anders als z. B. Sportveranstaltungen können Wahlen jedoch nicht einfach abgesagt, verschoben oder ohne Zuschauer:innen durchgeführt werden. Während in Israel während des Ausbruchs der Epidemie Anfang März spezielle Wahllokale mit medizinischem Personal in Schutzkleidung für unter Quarantäne stehende Wähler:innen eingerichtet wurden, haben in den USA einige Bundesstaaten die Vorwahlen verschoben. Bei den Präsidentschaftswahlen im November kam es dann zur Nutzung der Briefwahl in einem nie dagewesenen Ausmaß, was die Bekanntgabe der offiziellen Ergebnisse um Tage verzögerte, während derer Präsident Trump die Legitimität der Auszählung angriff. Auch für die Bundestagswahl im September 2021 rechnet der Bundeswahlleiter mit neuen Rekordwerten für die Briefwahl. In diesem Beitrag befassen wir uns mit dem Wählen während der globalen Corona-Krise. Vor welche Herausforderungen stellt die Pandemie die repräsentative Demokratie und welche Folgen ergeben sich daraus? Wir diskutieren diese Frage primär mit Blick auf etablierte Demokratien wie die Bundesrepublik anhand zweier Prämissen: Die Corona-Pandemie kann sich, erstens, direkt auf die Entscheidung der Wähler:innen auswirken und, zweitens, indirekt über die Auswirkungen auf den Wahlkampf und die Durchführung der Wahl. Wir gehen dabei davon aus, dass unsere Überlegungen nicht nur unmittelbar für die bevorstehenden Wahlen in diesem Jahr in der Bundesrepublik relevant sind, sondern im weiteren Verlauf des 21. Jahrhunderts erneut an Relevanz gewinnen könnten, denn leider steigt die Wahrscheinlichkeit von weiteren Pandemien in der Zukunft (Gavi 2020). Aufgrund der globalen Erwärmung werden zudem neben Pandemien auch Naturkatastrophen wie Stürme, Überschwemmungen, Waldbrände und Dürren voraussichtlich sowohl in ihrer Häufigkeit als auch in ihrer Intensität zunehmen, sodass die kommenden Wahlen nicht die letzten unter Krisenbedingungen gewesen sein könnten

Kritik auf neuen Wegen: Die politische Beteiligung junger und alter "critical citizens" im Vergleich

Kritische Bürger greifen überdurchschnittlich häufig auf unkonventionelle Beteiligungsformen zurück, um ihrer Unzufriedenheit mit der Politik Ausdruck zu verleihen. Aus diesem Grund werden sie in der aktuellen Forschung als wichtige Ressource der Demokratie verstanden. Gleichzeitig steigt in Deutschland der Anteil Älterer unter den Teilnehmern verschiedener Formen politischen Protests. Vor diesem Hintergrund wird untersucht, ob jüngere Bürger seltener als "critical citizens" bezeichnet werden können - und ob die jüngeren "unzufriedenen Demokraten" sich anders politisch verhalten als die älteren. Hierzu wird eine innovative Konzeption des "Kritischen Bürgers" entwickelt, welche die klassischen Konzepte um die Dimensionen der "internal efficacy" und "external efficacy" erweitert. Anhand von Daten aus der "German Longitudinal Election Study" wird nachgewiesen, dass viele junge Bürger kritische und engagierte Demokraten sind, sie jedoch unkonventionelle Formen der politischen Beteiligung "offline" häufiger durch Angebote im Internet ersetzen.Critical citizens nowadays are regarded as an important resource of democracy because they express their discontent with politics in unconventional participation above average. At the same time, the pr portion of older people participating in different forms of political protest is growing in Germany. Against this background, this paper analyses whether younger citizens can be characterised as "critical citizens" to a lower degree and whether younger discontented democrats are behaving differently. We develop an innovative conception and operationalization of the "critical citizen" extending classical concepts by the dimensions of internal and external efficacy. Using data of the "German Longitudinal Election Study", we show that many young citizens are critical and engaged democrats, however instead of choosing "offline" forms of unconventional participation, they often get involved in activities on the internet