Suchergebnisse

For the relatively stable and predictable German political system, the outcome of the Federal elections of 2017 was a remarkable surprise, with the country's two major political parties noting record losses, the major beneficiary being a relative newcomer to the political scene, the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party. This paper traces the trajectory of AfD from a primarily Euro-sceptic and market-friendly party in 2013 to a mainly culturally conservative and anti-immigrant party in 2017. Data from the ParteieNavi2017 Voting Advice Application are then used to attempt to trace the conditions at the individual level of analysis that fostered vote-switching behaviour from the two established mainstream parties (CDU/CSU and SPD) toward AfD. We find neither demographic characteristics nor self-placement of users on the economic Left-Right axis to be a determinant of vote switching to AfD; on the other hand, self-placement on the socio-cultural Liberal-Progressive dimension and policy preferences for anti- immigration and anti-EU integration policies were significant predictors of such voting behaviour.

So far, research on the effects of Voting Advice Applications has been focused on aspects of voting behavior, whether, for example, these online tools impact citizens' likelihood to vote or their voting choices. Relatively under-researched remain questions concerning the relationship between using VAAs and other forms of involvement in politics, such as engagement with electoral campaigns and information seeking. This paper seeks to examine differences in these behaviors associated with VAA-use utilizing panel data generated during and after the period of the German Bundestag Federal Elections in September, 2017, a period in which demand for VAAs was high, with the most popular tool in Germany, Wahl-O-Mat, being used more than 15.6 million times. The data from roughly 800 participants, sampled to be representative of the German internet users, was collected in 4 waves, one month before the election at the earliest and several weeks following at the latest, a time frame that allows the examination of short-term, as well as lingering effects. Finally, beyond establishing the presence or absence of the aforementioned differences, we further attempt to localize them across different characteristics of respondents, from demographics to their political interest and knowledge.

So far, research on the effects of Voting Advice Applications has been primarily focused on aspects of voting behaviour, whether, for example, these online tools impact citizens' likelihood to vote or voting choices. Relatively under-researched remain questions concerning the relationship between using VAAs and other forms of political participation, such as involvement in electoral campaigns. This paper uses panel data generated in 4 waves during and after the period of the German Federal Elections in September, 2017 to examine the tendency of using a VAA to be associated with such behaviours. Results indeed suggest a positive association between VAA-use and increased consumption of politics-related media, so that using the Wahl-O-Mat VAA was contemporaneous with an increased frequency of information-seeking in other media (e.g. TV, newspapers), suggesting that the two types of behaviours might be mutually reinforcing. We additionally find a positive, though not statistically significant tendency to use the Wahl-O-Mat and participate in electoral campaigns (through e.g. attending party rallies). However, we find no evidence of an association between VAA use and increased interpersonal talk about politics or seeking of information closely related to the electoral contest, such as reading party manifestos.