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An exploration of the impact of a candidate being perceived the "winner" of political debates on individual voting behavior in West Germany, utilizing probit models of the vote choice, including party identification & candidate evaluation, as well as whether the individual judged a particular candidate as the "winner" or "fared best" in the debate. These models are tested using panel data for 1972, 1976, 1980, & 1983 from the National Election Surveys conducted in West Germany. The results show that there is a consistent impact of "winning" the debate on individual voting choice in West Germany: controlling for party & other factors, there is a significantly higher probability of voting for the party of that politician the respondent feels won the contest. It is concluded that debates ultimately have a substantial electoral impact. 5 Tables, 31 References. Modified AA

Impact of a candidate being perceived as the "winner" of political debates on individual voting behavior in West Germany, 1972-83.

This article explores citizens' political information seeking, which constitutes the `demand side' of political communication during election campaigns. In order to look into what motivates a voter to seek political information, the article formulates a model drawing on ideas from the uses and gratifications tradition, the rational choice framework and the seminal studies of the Columbia and Michigan schools of electoral research. Among the determinants of political information seeking investigated are: social expectations to be politically informed; a personal duty to stay politically informed; a desire to express one's political orientations through voting; and the entertainment aspect of politics. Regarding the dependent variable of campaign information seeking, its overall intensity and the particular sources used (e.g. newspaper, television and radio reports, party political broadcasts, bulletin boards) to gain this information are examined. The article analyses a study of a local German election, which contains a wide variety of measures suitable to test our hypotheses. The empirical analysis shows that campaign information seeking can be explained fairly well ( R2 up to ≈ 22 percent). Among the determinants, social expectations to be politically informed exerted the greatest influence in our model. The influence of the determinants on the specific information sources varies substantially across the different sources. Therefore, explaining the decision to seek particular information sources during an election campaign demands the general model be more specialized.

On the morning of October 30, 2007, Hillary Clinton led Barack Obama, her closest
challenger for the Democratic presidential nomination, by a comfortable margin in every
significant national poll. That night, however, Senator Clinton, debating in Philadelphia,
wandered into an ambush. Asked for her opinion of then-New York Governor Eliot Spitzer's
plan to allow illegal immigrants to apply for driver's licenses, she first seemed to support
the idea and then, under withering attack from Connecticut Senator Chris Dodd, almost
immediately backed away from her tepid endorsement. Writing shortly after the debate, Mark
Halperin (2007) of Time magazine
opined that "[i]f [Clinton] loses the nomination, tonight will go down in history as the
first step to her defeat."

Using national survey panel data collected in Germany during the 1990 Bundestag election campaign, we develop a model to assess the effect of the campaign on individual votes and the election outcome. We find that the dominant effects of the campaign on German voters, as in the Lazarsfeld et al. studies from the 1940s and in more recent US research, were the 'reinforcement' of earlier preferences and the 'activation' of latent vote dispositions based on fundamental individual attitudes such as party affiliation and left-right ideology. At the same time, the analysis shows that the number of campaign 'converts' (those who vote against their dispositions and prior preferences) was approximately 14 per cent of the electorate. The vote division among these individuals was overwhelmingly pro-government, suggesting that the 1990 German campaign altered a sufficient number of votes to turn what was an even contest, based on the electorate's initial political dispositions, into a solid government coalition victory.

Using national survey panel data collected in Germany during the 1990 Bundestag election campaign, we develop a model to assess the effect of the campaign on individual votes and the election outcome. We find that the dominant effects of the campaign on German voters, as in the Lazarsfeld et al. studies from the 1940s and in more recent US-research, were the 'reinforcement' of earlier preferences and the 'activation' of latent vote dispositions based on fundamental individual attitudes such as party affiliation and left-right ideology. At the same time, the analysis shows that the number of campaign 'converts' (those who vote against their dispositions and prior preferences) was approximately 14 per cent of the electorate. The vote division among these individuals was overwhelmingly pro-government, suggesting that the 1990 German campaign altered a sufficient number of votes to turn what was an even contest, based on the electorate's initial political dispositions, into a solid government coalition victory. (British Journal of Political Science / AuD)

In diesem Beitrag geht es darum, den behaupteten Zusammenhang zwischen der Intensität der Nutzung der Massenmedien und der Abschwächung von Parteibindungen anhand empirischer Daten einer Prüfung zu unterziehen. Zunächst wird untersucht, ob wechselhaftes Wahlverhalten tatsächlich, wie von der Dealignement-These behauptet, vor allem bei den kognitiv hoch mobilisierten Parteilosen anzutreffen ist. Es folgt eine kurze Erörterung der langfristigen Entwicklung der Reichweiten der tagesaktuellen Medien Fernsehen und Tageszeitung in der Bundesrepublik. Hierbei wird eine Aggregatperspektive angelegt. Anschließend wird in Individualperspektive analysiert, mit welcher Intensität sich Wähler während des Wahlkampfes zur Bundestagswahl 1990 der Medien Fernsehen und Tageszeitung bedient haben. Darauf aufbauend wird im letzten Abschnitt der Untersuchung gefragt, ob die Neuen Parteilosen tatsächlich eine Gruppe sind, die sich besonders intensiv den politischen Informationsangeboten der Massenmedien zuwendet. (ICE)