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The corrective action hypothesis predicts that people will take political action in response to media content they perceive to be biased against them, and evidence has accumulated in favor of it. However, research has not yet investigated the hypothesis in comparative context. This study fills that gap in the literature, relying on the Comparative National Election Project (N  = 23,527), and analyzing data from 17 countries. Results show evidence of an overall positive relationship between perceived media bias and political action, and they also show evidence that this relationship varies in strength between countries. Moreover, press freedom partially explains this variation. Results are discussed in light of the theory of corrective action and recent trends in political participation worldwide. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, interest has surged in issue voting based on competence attributions to parties. To vote on policy competence, citizens need to attribute to at least one party the capacity to solve the problems they deem important. The article shows that this condition is often unmet, because voters see no party as competent. Using data collected at the 2009 and 2013 German Federal Elections, it demonstrates that beliefs about parties' ineptness on pressing issues originate from personal and contextual factors. Their most important source is a spillover effect from general disaffection about parties. But which issues are high on the public's agenda also makes a difference. Voters are less likely to see parties as competent if the problems on their minds concern polity rather than policy issues, and if they concern issues not owned by a party. Election campaigns, on the other hand, improve attributions of issue competence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introducing the special issue, section (1) provides an overview of the election campaign, (2) discusses major aspects of the election's outcome and (3) highlights the broader theoretical implications of the contributions to the special issue to the research literature. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article addresses two aspects of social network influence on voters’ electoral choices that are not well understood: the role of party systems as institutional contexts and the relationship between social pressure and information sharing as mechanisms of influence. It argues that in the cleavage-based multiparty systems of Western Europe, discussant influence at elections occurs in two stages. First, discussants place social pressure on voters to opt for parties from the same ideological camp. Secondly, by providing information, discussants influence which parties voters eventually choose out of these restricted ‘consideration sets’. The study tests these assumptions using a panel survey conducted at the 2009 German federal election. The first proposition is clearly confirmed, and the evidence supports the second proposition, although less unequivocally. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper examines the effects of three main forms of campaign communication on voter turnout in the 2013 German Federal Election – party contact, the news media’s political coverage and everyday political discussions. Our study is innovative in that it uses panel data to reduce the problems of endogeneity and examines the impact of each information source controlling for the other two. The results show that media exposure via broadsheet newspapers is the strongest stimulus to turnout, followed by parties’ mediated electioneering efforts. We also find that under certain conditions, exposure to information sources can also demobilize voters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the big surprises of the 2013 German federal election was the good result of the Alternative for Germany (AfD), a party that was founded just six months before the election and none-the-less only by a small margin missed the five-percent-threshold necessary to gain seats in the Bundestag. Using the Rolling Cross-Section/pre-post-panel survey conducted as part of the 2013 German Longitudinal Election Study (GLES) vote intentions and vote choices for the AfD are analyzed. The electorate of the AfD consisted of two groups: a small group of early-deciding voters that found the party mainly attractive because of its Euro-critical stances in economic policy, and a larger group of late-deciders who were attracted to this party through the immigration-critical stances that it emphasized during its campaign alongside its core theme of denunciation of the European currency union. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Past research has tended to view citizens' everyday political discussions as inherently favorable to electoral participation. This article proposes a contrasting perspective by identifying conditions under which citizens' integration in social networks can lead to abstention. Using the data of a pre-post panel survey from the 2009 German Longitudinal Election Study, we find that besides the “social logic” of mobilization there is also a “social logic” of demobilization. Non-voting is contagious, particularly when it takes place in groups characterized by “strong ties” and occurs in conjunction with frequent political discussions with non-voters who are considered political experts. Our findings challenge the prevailing orthodoxy about the value of social interaction for improving the quality democracy by showing that under certain circumstances it may turn citizens off electoral politics. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Against the background of a substantial rise of the number of late-deciding voters at recent elections the paper simultaneously tests four complementary hypotheses on the background of contemporary electors' timing of decision making. The traditional floating voter hypothesis fares best in this analysis: lacking partisan predispositions and a general detachment from politics appear as the main reasons why people take longer to make up their minds. Indifference and attitudinal ambivalence as well as mixed party-political signals from voters' social networks also lead to electors postponing their voting decisions. The hypothesis that late deciding is a consequence of increased availability and attention to mediated political information is refuted. Several long-term trends are discussed as reasons for the increase of late deciding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the way three types of factors influence eastern and western German voters in order to assess the similarities and differences in electoral behavior across the former East-West divide. First, to what extend does the performance of parties and the regime influence party support in the East and the West? Second, how do candidate perceptions affect party support? Third, to what degree do ideological values influence vote choice? The results suggest that even 20 years after unification, voters in the East and the West still follow a partially different logic. While candidate evaluations broadly influence party support similarly, negative performance assessments lead west German voters to support the opposition, whereas eastern Germans tend to either “exit” the electoral arena or support the Linke party. Moreover, ideological values have no affect on party choice in the West, whereas they strongly influence the choice of Die Linke in the East. Theoretically, the results reflect the different East-West experiences, illustrating that voters in newer democracies may base their party choice on a different rationale than voters in more mature democracies. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This article analyses the 2009 German federal election campaign with specific emphasis on the three categories of actors that play key roles in contemporary election campaigns - parties and their candidates, the mass media, and the voters. Mainly aiming at a theoretically informed comprehensive description, the article addresses some key themes of the recent literature on electioneering. The Bundestag election on 27 September 2009 was preceded by a campaign that lacked drama. There were several reasons for the absence of a more polarised campaign, not least the fact that CDU/CSU and SPD had been tied together in a Grand Coalition and had to deal with massive political challenges. Against the background of an unclear picture painted by the media, the feasibility and likelihood of various types of government coalitions were dominant topics of the campaign. The CDU/CSU in many respects had an edge over the SPD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In sharp contrast to the 2003 election (when the Christian Democrats were able to form a single party government), the 2008 Hessian state election led to a return of "Hessian Peculiarities". The 2008 election was dominated by polarizing campaigns (based on the issues of education, social justice, and crime) fought between two opposing blocs (Christian Democrats/Liberals vs. Social Democrats/Greens), each willing to form a coalition of its own. In the course of the campaign, the Social Democrats (lead by Andrea Ypsilanti) were gaining ground and increasing pressure on the Christian Democrats (and its prime minister Roland Koch). In the end, the Social Democrats were able to increase their vote share considerably, while the Christian Democrats were faced with massive losses - although they were still Hessia's largest party by a very small margin. The liberals came in third, pushing the Greens aside. The Leftist Party was able to enter Parliament for the first time. The polarization of Hessids party system precluded the formation of a grand coalition, no other two-party-co- alition had a majority in Parliament, and three-party-arrangements could not be agreed on. Given that, the ruling Christian Democrats stayed in office as a caretaker government, which in turn lead the Social Democrats - contrary to their campaign promises - to take steps to install a red-green minority government tolerated by the Leftist Party. Such at- tempts were launched twice, but both failed due to the refusal of individual Social-Democratic MPs to follow. In the end, the dissolution of Parliament was accepted by all parties as the only feasible alternative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]