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"Committees are important features in legislative decision making. The question of who serves on what committee is thus an important one. This paper asks about how mixed electoral systems affect the way committee seats are allocated. Stratmann and Baur (2002) argue that German parties strategically assign nominally elected legislators to those committees that allow them to please their local constituents. Our paper questions this argument in light of the functioning of the German mixed-member system and the individual motivations of German MPs. We argue that the motivations of German legislators do not necessarily mirror their mode of election, and that German parties do not necessarily perceive winning nominal votes as a predominant goal. We hypothesize that German parties aim to increase their vote share on the list-vote (Zweitstimme) by supporting legislators with a strong local focus independent of their mode of election. We will test this argument empirically drawing from the German Candidate Study 2005 and from statistical data on committee membership for the 16th German Bundestag (2005-2009)." (author's abstract)

"Coalition signals can offer crucial information to voters during political campaigns. In multiparty systems, they reduce the number of theoretically possible coalitions to a much smaller set of plausible and likely coalitions. Strategic voters who care more about the formation of the next coalition government than supporting the preferred party might, for example, defect from the preferred party in favor of another party that might produce a more desirable coalition government. For other voters, coalition signals might merely elicit affective responses which can shift the vote. In this study, we investigate whether and how different coalition signals affect vote intentions and activate different party and coalition preferences. We report the results of a nationally representative survey experiment conducted before the 2006 Austrian General Election. Respondents encountered four vignettes with hypothetical coalitions, each followed by the standard vote intention question. The results indicate that voters are responsive to coalition signals, and especially voters with two preferred parties tend to change their vote intentions. Finally, a more detailed look at Green Party voters suggests that individual party and coalition preferences help to explain the direction of these changes." (authors abstract)

"Coalition preferences in multiparty systems have received increasing attention in recent years, both as an additional political identity beyond parties and as another explanatory factor for vote decisions above and beyond party preferences. In this paper, we use survey data from the 2006 Austrian election to investigate the accessibility of party and coalition preferences and the extent to which coalition preferences can be explained by party preferences and other affective and cognitive factors such as candidates, ideology, and issue positions. The evidence suggests that questions about coalitions are associated with longer response times than similar questions about party preferences, that is, respondents must make more of a cognitive effort to form and/or retrieve them. Finally, coalition preferences are only partially predicted by party preferences and candidate evaluations, while policy preferences are mostly unrelated. Coalition preferences emerge as a fairly independent factor in multiparty systems." (author's abstract)

"The paper tests a simple model of vote choice in a mixed electoral system when voters have two votes with survey data collected at the time of the 2010 North Rhine Westphalia election. We show that local candidate preferences and local chances affect only the local vote while party and leader ratings influence both votes though more strongly the list vote. Contrary to expectations, coalition preferences influence the local vote as well as the list vote. There is clearer evidence of the local vote being contaminated by the list vote than the other way around." (author's abstract)

"Five days in advance of the 2005 German national election, political experts, voters, and novices were asked to predict the outcome of the election. In an experimental manipulation, half of the non-expert sample was provided with additional poll information in the form of a figure with trend lines. The results show that (1) experts were marginally more accurate than non-experts but highly overconfident in their predictions, that (2) access to pre-election poll information improved the forecasting ability of novices, and that (3) partisan preferences biased the forecasts of voters to a small degree (projection effect)." (author's abstract)

"Accurate expectations about the outcome of elections play a central role in psychological and economic theories of voting. In the paper, three questions about voters' expectations are investigated. First, we identify and test several factors that influence the overall accuracy or quality of voters' expectations. Second, the phenomenon of 'wishful thinking' is tested and confirmed for expectations about the electoral performance of individual parties and coalitions. Finally, two mechanisms how expectations might influence voting behavior are identified and tested. Based on surveys from Austria and Germany, the results suggest that voters not only rely on expectations to avoid casting 'wasted' votes for parties without electoral chances, but that they are able to engage in fairly sophisticated strategic coalition voting." (author's abstract)

"Im deutschen Fünf-Parteien-System nimmt die Zahl der möglichen Koalitionen zu und Koalitionssignale gewinnen daher eine zunehmende Bedeutung für das Entscheidungsverhalten der Wähler. Um individuelle Wahlentscheidungen angemessen zu analysieren, müssen Koalitionssignale folglich bei der Modellierung des Wählerkalküls mit einbezogen werden. Der vorliegende Beitrag untersucht vor diesem Hintergrund die Bedeutung von Koalitionssignalen für das Wahlverhalten. Anhand von Analysen verschiedener Datensätze der German Longitudinal Election Study (GLES) wird für die Bundestagswahl 2009 gezeigt, dass Koalitionssignale zu Veränderungen der Wahlabsicht führen. Aufgrund der komplexen Koalitionssituation führen solche Wahlentscheidungen allerdings nicht immer zu einer Maximierung des Erwartungsnutzens, Wähler können vielmehr durch Koalitionssignale auch in die Irre geführt werden." (Autorenreferat), "The number of possible coalitions in the German five-party system is rising. Coalition signals become consequently more important for the decision-making process of voters. In order to model individual vote choices adequately, the impact of coalition signals must therefore be taken into account. Taking the case of the 2009 federal election, we provide evidence for these assumptions using several data sources of the German Longitudinal Election Study (GLES). We show that coalition signals can change individual vote intentions. Due to the increasing complexity of coalition formation, such behavior does not always maximize voters’expected utility. Instead, coalition signals may lead voters astray." (author's abstract)

"This study presents a new method to estimate the locations of voters, parties, and European political groups in the same ideological space using left-right placements by voters. We apply our method to the 2009 European Election Survey and demonstrate that the improvement in party estimates that one gains from xing various survey bias issues is significant. Our scaling strategy provides left-right positions of voters and party positions for 162 parties - more than traditional expert survey studies currently provide. We test the convergent validity of these positions in multiple ways and demonstrate how rescaled voter and party positions can be used in cross-national research." (author's abstract)

"Germany provides an especially interesting case for the study of strategic voting because they use a two-ballot system on Election Day. Voters are encouraged to split their votes using different strategies. The paper is an example of how much more can be learned if we reconsider and refine our theories. I provide a first step towards a theory of strategic voting and add it to the typical ticket splitting discussion. (...)" (author's abstract)

'Anhand von Panel-Daten, die bei einer Umfrage in Deutschland während des Bundestagswahlkampfs 1990 erhoben wurden, entwickeln wir ein Modell zur Beurteilung der Wirkung des Wahlkampfes auf das individuelle Wahlverhalten und das Wahlergebnis. Unsere Ergebnisse entsprachen den Untersuchungen von Lazarsfeld et al. aus den 40er Jahren und der neueren amerikanischen Forschung. Wir fanden heraus, daß die Wirkung des Wahlkampfes auf deutsche Wähler vor allem in der Verstärkung früherer Präferenzen und der Aktivierung latenter Wahl-Dispositionen bestand, die auf grundlegenden individuellen Einstellungen wie Parteizugehörigkeit und Rechts-Links-Ideologie beruhen. Zugleich zeigt die Analyse, daß die Anzahl der Personen, die entgegen ihren Dispositionen und früheren Präferenzen ihre Stimme abgaben, annähernd 14 Prozent der Wählerschaft ausmacht. Davon war der Anteil der Pro-Regierungs-Entscheidungen überwältigend groß. Deshalb nehmen wir an, daß der Bundestagswahlkampf von 1990 den von der ursprünglichen Disposition der Wählerschaft aus gesehen gleichstarken Wettstreit in einen soliden Sieg der Regierungskoalition umwandelte. Die Ergebnisse werden hinsichtlich ihrer theoretischen und normativen Implikationen diskutiert.' (HSübers), '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 U.S. 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 percent 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. The results are discussed in terms of their theoretical as well as normative implications.' (authotr's abstract)

Es wird der Frage nachgegangen, inwieweit affektive Einflüsse die interpersonale Wahrnehmung und die Meinungsbildung im sozialen Kontext beeinflussen. Modelle der sozialen Wahrnehmung werden dargestellt und einige theoretische Grundlagen für derartige Effekte entwickelt. Ergebnisse empirischer Untersuchungen (z. B. bei der Selbsteinschätzung, der Partner-Einschätzung oder der Präferierung von Partnern) zeigen deutlich unterschiedliche Ergebnisse in Abhängigkeit von der 'Stimmung' der Untersuchungspersonen. Es wird ein Modell zur Beschreibung dieser Effekte entwickelt und diskutiert. (psz), 'What role do feelings play in interpersonal perception? This chapter reviews our empirical research program on affective influences on social judgments, and a new theoretical framework accounting for such effects is presented. In the first section, models of social judgment, and the affect-priming framework are outlined. Empirical work on affective influences on social judgments is reviewed next. Results show robust and reliable mood effects on a variety of social judgments, from simple behaviour interpretations tasks to complex and demanding attribution and interpersonal preference judgments. The role of affect in social judgments by children, in discussion groups, and in field settings is also considered, and evidence for the affect-priming model from reaction-time studies is summarized. In the final section, more recent theoretical formulations are discussed, and a multi-process model able to account for the empirical findings is presented. The implications of these results for everyday social judgments, and for contemporary models of social cognition are considered.' (author's abstract)

In mehreren Experimenten werden die Einflüsse der Stimmungslage auf die Wahl eines Partners (z. B. eines Arbeitspartners, eines Sitzpartners oder eines Gesprächspartners) und die Informationsverarbeitungsstrategien in derartigen Situationen untersucht. Es zeigte sich, daß niedergeschlagene oder traurige Untersuchungspersonen deutlich abweichendes Verhalten zeigen, z. B. in Bezug auf die benötigte Entscheidungszeit oder die Verarbeitung von interpersonalen Informationen. Die Ergebnisse werden interpretiert als Beweis für eine stimmungsabhängige Strategiewahl bei der Verarbeitung von interpersonalen Präferenzen. (psz), 'Are interpersonal choices influenced by mood? Three experiments found that information search and decision strategies when selecting a partner are significantly influenced by feeling state and the personal relevance of the task. Personal choices by dysphoric subjects in particular were based on 'motivated processing strategies', looking for, remembering and using more effectively information about rewarding personal characteristics in a future partner. In Experiment 1 (N=60), sad subjects preferred rewarding to competent partners, and remembered better information supporting that choice. In Experiment 2 (N=96), motivated processing led to information selectivity, greater decision speed, and a distinct processing strategy. Experiment 3 (N=42) used computerized stimulus presentation, and found that sad subjects selectively choise and looked at interpersonal information, remembered it better, and were faster in choosing a rewarding partner. The results are interpreted as evidence for motivated mood-repair strategies in interpersonal choices. The implications of the findings for research on interpersonal relations, and for contemporary affect-cognition theories are discussed.' (author's abstract)