Lokaler Kandidatenwettbewerb zeigt die Personalisierung der Politik

Neben der Programmatik einer Partei spielen immer stärker die Persönlichkeiten der Kandidatinnen und Kandidaten eine Rolle für den Wahlausgang. Im Rahmen der Deutschen Wahlstudie GLES wurde untersucht, wie sich diese Entwicklung auf den Wahlkampf in den Wahlkreisen auswirkt. Es zeigt sich: Wo der Wettbewerb um die parteiinterne Nominierung stark ist, richten Kandidaten ihren Wahlkampf strategisch verstärkt auf ihre Person aus. Dasselbe gilt für die zweite, entscheidende Runde, den Kampf um die Wählerstimmen. Auch hier nimmt die Personalisierung mit stärker werdendem Wettbewerb zu. 

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Bewegung? Partei? In den Landtagen agiert die AfD uneinheitlich

Die erste systematische Analyse der AfD­-Präsenz in deutschen Landesparlamenten zeigt die junge Partei in strategischer Hinsicht als heterogen. Es sind unterschiedliche Richtungen zu erkennen: eher parla­mentarisch ausgerichtete Arbeit einer konstruktiven Opposition und eher bewegungsorientierte Arbeit. In die­sem Sinne bipolar sind auch einzelne Fraktionen, in denen es Vertreter bei­ der Strategien gibt. Gemeinsam ist den AfD-Fraktionen in den Landtagen die Tendenz, stark auf die Arbeit im Plenum und deren mediale Nutzung zu setzen und weniger in die konkre­te Arbeit in den Ausschüssen zu in­ vestieren.

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Die Arbeit der AfD in den Landtagen

WZB Discussion Paper zur AFD Fraktionsarbeit zwischen parlamentarischer Kraft und „Bewegung“.

Die Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) erweist sich in ihrer parlamentarischen Landtagsarbeit als sehr heterogen. Sie agiert in unterschiedlicher regionaler Ausprägung „bipolar“: als Bewegung und als herkömmliche Parlamentspartei. Dies zeigt die erste empirische Untersuchung der AfD-Arbeit in 10 Landesparlamenten von Sommer 2014 (Sachsen) bis Mai 2017, die am Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung (WZB) ein Team um die Forscher Wolfgang Schroeder (Universität Kassel/WZB) und Bernhard Weßels (WZB) vorgelegt hat. Die Politikwissenschaftler haben Parlaments-Dokumente und Mediendarstellungen ausgewertet und Interviews mit Fraktionsvorsitzenden und -geschäftsführungen der AfD und den anderen in den betreffenden Landtagen vertretenen Parteien geführt.

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Brexit: Risk and fun of majority rule and direct democracy

Listening to the news on the morning of the 23rd of July 2016 was a surprise for many. In a public discussion the previous evening, Wolfgang Merkel and Michael Zürn, both directors at the WZB Social Science Research Center, had expected a vote for “remain”, not “leave,” in line with TV and other sources. What is worrisome is not that the prognoses were wrong but the outcome.

17.410.742 voted “leave”, 16.141.241 “remain”. This is a majority for “leave”. However, to be clear: this isn’t a decision of the majority at all. Only 34,4 percent of eligible voters voted for “leave”. This is little more than a third. About 91,6 percent registered to vote, which is 4.279.182 fewer than all eligible voters. This is lower than the Alternative Vote referendum of 2011 (93,0 %) and much lower than the European Community (Common Market) Membership Referendum of 1975 (99,5%).Turnout among registered voters was 72,2 percent. Even if we calculate solely on the basis of registered voters, only 37,4 of those registered voted for “leave”.

For a country that advertises its own majoritarian electoral system as democratically superior to proportional representation, it seems to be acceptable to execute a decision supported only by a minority. If we take majority decisions seriously, however, it follows that there should be a positive absolute majority of eligible voters. This certainly does not require that registration and turnout amount to 100 percent. In the Brexit referendum, it would have meant that about 25,39 million voters, or 75,7 percent of those registered, would have had to vote for “leave” in order to speak of a majority in a substantial sense. A majority of the entire membership is a requirement in many decision-bodies for changing the status quo. And leaving the EU is certainly a fundamental change of the situation of the UK.

Although a margin of almost 1,3 million votes for “leave” seems to be enough to conform to the classic British position of a majority victory, it seems problematic given the considerable opposition to the exit. There are at least three fundamental splits: a regional, a rural-urban, and a generational one.

Regionally, in Scotland all constituencies had a majority for “remain”; England, Wales, and Northern Ireland showed differences between constituencies. England and Wales voted in favor of exit, Northern Ireland for “remain”. A second split is between rural and urban areas. In most urban districts, in particular in and around the bigger cities above 250 thousand inhabitants, a majority voted for “remain”. The third split is between young and old. According to data from polls, 57 percent of voters of age 65 and higher voted for “leave”. They represent 17 percent of the population. Among the voters below 65, about 44 percent voted for “leave”. If the older voters had voted in the same proportion as the younger, “leave” votes would have been about 14,7 million instead of 17,4 million. That would not have been enough.

The UK now is facing a split between Scotland and the South, urban and rural areas, and young and old. The older citizens were decisive for a decision affecting a much longer future than they themselves will be affected by.

Against this background, making use of representative democracy would probably not be the worst solution. The Parliament can still decide. Whatever the decision will be, there is a clear lesson for direct democracy: get the rules right so that majority does not in fact mean minority.

Table: Turnout and Result of Brexit Referendum for Votes, Registered Voters, and Eligible Voting Population

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Analyzing elections worldwide: Harmonized Trend File of CSES Modules 1 to 3 published by DD researchers

The Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES) is a collaborative program of national election studies around the world devoting itself to comparative electoral research and investigating the behavioral impact of political institutions since 1994. CSES provides survey data on elections for a large set of countries. However, what was missing was a dataset combining all these election surveys from different CSES waves in one comparative dataset which enables straight-forward access and research possibilities for the wider scientific public. A team of WZB researchers, Bernhard Weßels, Heiko Giebler, Josephine Lichteblau, Antonia May, Reinhold Melcher (now Fern-Universität Hagen) and Aiko Wagner, has now compiled such a dataset and it was made accessible via the CSES website on June 1st.

The WZB has been involved in the CSES program from the beginning being the host of its founding conference in 1994 and, since then, repeatedly organizing meetings of the CSES Planning Committee and Plenary Sessions. Members of CSES are national election study teams that agreed to include a common module of survey questions in their representative post-election studies, each for the duration of about five years. The respective module is developed by the CSES Planning Committee, that Hans-Dieter Klingemann and then Bernhard Weßels from the WZB were part of from 1994 to 2014. Providing one of the most important data sources for comparative electoral research, CSES can be regarded as a successful and constantly growing project of the comparative social sciences. Since its foundation, the number of participating countries increased continuously from 25 to over 50 (see figure below).

CSES World Map

Coverage of CSES Modules 1 to 3, 51 countries (several countries are even included with more than one elections study)

The WZB team of the German Longitudinal Election Study (GLES) under principle investigator Bernhard Weßels is responsible for the German contributions to CSES. The team only recently published a Harmonized Trend File of CSES Modules 1 to 3 covering 128 national elections of 51 countries from 1994 to 2011. The CSES 1-3 Harmonized Trend File is not simply a merged version of the three single datasets of the three modules containing each variable of each module in their original form. For the CSES 1-3 Harmonized Trend File all micro- and macro-level variables that were part of at least two of the three waves have been cumulated and partly integrated across the modules and participating countries. This means that for those variables there is only one harmonized variable containing all cases of all (or up to) three waves in the harmonized dataset. Coding of these variables has been harmonized as well to ensure that values represent the same substantive content over all waves and countries for which the variable is present. Therefore, the CSES 1-3 Harmonized Trend File provides a sound data source for analyses covering more than one wave of CSES and over time. Moreover, the universal coding of variables between CSES modules 1 to 3 ensures validity and reliability of empirical research using CSES data. With this data publication, the WZB and especially the department ‘Democracy and Democratization’ lead by Wolfgang Merkel follows its self-conception and tradition of common good production in the realm of empirical research with the goal of enabling and fostering high quality research not just in-house but all over the world.

The CSES 1-3 Harmonized Trend File and an extensive documentation are available for download from the CSES website under the “Data Center” link.

War das wirklich so gewollt? Die Bundestagswahl 2013 und das Wählerverhalten

Dieser Beitrag ist – neben weiteren lesenswerten Berichten – auch in der aktuellen Ausgabe der WZB-Mitteilungen erschienen. Die komplette Ausgabe gibt es hier (pdf), zu den einzelnen Beiträgen folgt ihr diesem Link.

Die Bundestagswahl 2013 reiht sich in die Kette ungewöhnlicher Bundestagswahlen im 21. Jahrhundert ein. Erstens erschütterten die Wählerinnen und Wähler mit ihren Stimmabgaben am 22. September letzten Jahres das deutsche Parteiensystem. Zweitens war die Bundestagswahl 2013 diejenige, bei der die Volatilität, also die Veränderung der Stimmenanteile der Parteien von einer Wahl zur anderen, stärker war als bei jeder anderen Bundestagswahl zuvor. Drittens führte das Wahlergebnis nach für Deutschland relativ langen Verhandlungen in eine Regierung der Koalition der beiden großen Parteien, CDU/CSU und SPD. Eine Große Koalition hatte es zuvor in der Geschichte der Bundesrepublik nur zweimal gegeben. Weiterlesen

German Federal Elections: Voters Rock the Party System

The result

The Germans have voted and rocked the German party system. The election night was like a thriller – including a murder. After the voting boots had closed at six o’clock in the evening, the first prognosis indicated that the liberal party (Free Democrats) would not make it into parliament. At about eight o’clock in the evening, it looked as if the Christian Democrats would even get an absolute majority of seats. Taken together, the Social Democrats and Greens who had fought for a change in government could not obtain as many seats as the Christian Democrats alone. The Left Party did make it, the Alliance for Germany, a right-wing conservative party, came close to the five-percent hurdle but finally missed it. The prognoses proved right except for the short time span in the evening when they assumed a majority for the Christian Democrats. Weiterlesen

Umfrageergebnisse sind keine Wahlergebnisse – aber doch gute Prognosen?

Immer wieder werden die letzten Umfrageergebnisse kurz vor einer Bundestagswahl als Prognosen missverstanden. Es scheint nicht zu helfen, dass Demoskopen immer wieder vermerken, Umfrageergebnisse würden Stimmungen widerspiegeln und keine Prognose über ein Wahlergebnis bedeuten. Die Prognosen würden am Wahlabend aufgrund von Wahltagsbefragungen und danach anhand von Hochrechnungen gemacht – nicht früher, nicht später. Es ist jedoch der Öffentlichkeit kaum abzugewöhnen, Umfrageergebnisse dennoch als Prognosen zu lesen. Wie viel wird eigentlich falsch gedacht, wenn so gedacht wird? Weiterlesen