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The use of party cues is a fundamental process of how voters adopt policy preferences. While research has shown that party identification is an important driver of political attitudes in general and policy positions in particular, we know little about how negative party identification (identifying as an opponent to a party) impacts voters' political preferences. This article aims to fill this gap in the literature by combining an experimental and observational empirical analysis of the effect of negative party identification on voters' issue preferences in the context of direct democratic decision‐making. First, we analyze a survey experiment conducted during a real‐world campaign on affordable housing for a popular ballot in Switzerland. Using continuous measures of party identification, we show a causal relationship between negative party identification and voters' policy preferences. Second, we use longitudinal observational data of vote choice on direct democratic policy proposals and show that voters adopt policy preferences that contrast with the policy positions of parties they oppose. In sum, the two complementary designs show that voters tend to position themselves not only in alignment with their preferred parties but also in opposition to parties with which they negatively identify. Furthermore, the results indicate that, when adopting policy preferences, negative cues may carry as much weight as positive party cues. Our analysis has important implications for understanding voters' adoption of policy preferences in general and specifically in the direct democratic context. Supplementary Files: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/politicsandgovernance/article/downloadSuppFile/5702/2767

Following geographically concentrated changes in housing markets, real estate prices have skyrocketed in many cities and metropolitan areas across Germany. These developments have not only shifted the macro-level distribution of asset wealth among homeowners but have also resulted in price spikes in rental markets, which in turn have intensified social and economic risks among renters. This preregistered study aims to provide a theoretical rationale for, and first-time insights into, the determinants of individual preferences for rent control. It argues that policy preferences are shaped by individuals’ economic and geographic positions in the housing market. It not only explores differences between homeowners and renters but also considers how heterogeneity in exposure to the burden of rental costs—structured by local rents and disposable income—explains differences within the group of renters. The results reveal the precedence of egotropic considerations over geotropic effects of common market exposures. Homeowners oppose rent control far more strongly than renters do, whose support for rent control is primarily a function of income. Market rents, in contrast, only heighten support for rent control among low-income renters. These findings deepen our understanding of the politicization of housing policy in Germany and advance important debates on political reactions to housing markets.

Mit der Ampelkoalition aus SPD, Die Grünen und FDP formierte sich nach der Bundestagswahl 2021 ein für die Bundesebene neues Regierungsbündnis. Über einen langen Zeitraum hinweg konkurrierten die deutschen Parteien in vergleichsweise klaren und ideologisch homogenen Lagern um die Regierungsverantwortung. Die Fragmentierung des Parteiensystems machte Mehrheiten für Zweiparteienbündnisse jedoch immer unwahrscheinlicher, und die Parteien waren gezwungen, neue Allianzen zu erwägen. Diese neuen Koalitionsmodelle lassen sich nicht mehr eindeutig entlang der klassischen Dimension politischen Wettbewerbs in Deutschland verorten. Dies wirft die Frage auf, wie die Wähler*innen diese neuen Regierungsalternativen bewerten. Dieser Beitrag argumentiert, dass eine differenzierte Betrachtung von Politikfeldern anstelle allgemeinerer Ideologie genauere Erkenntnisse über die Ursprünge der Koalitionspräferenzen der Wähler bietet. Außerdem legt die Salienztheorie nahe, dass nicht jedes Politikfeld für jede*n Bürger*in gleichermaßen von Bedeutung ist und daher die Effekte der politikfeldspezifischen Distanz zwischen Wähler*in und Koalition sowie der innerkoalitionären Heterogenität von der Salienz eines Politikfelds moderiert werden. Diese Erwartungen werden mit Daten der Vorwahl-Querschnittsbefragung 2021 der German Longitudinal Election Study (GLES) getestet. Die Ergebnisse unterstreichen die Relevanz spezifischer Themenfelder sowie der Salienz für die Koalitionspräferenzen der Wähler*innen. The 2021 German federal election led to the formation of the so-called traffic-light coalition between the Social Democratic Party, the Green Party, and the Free Democratic Party, which had never before been agreed upon at the federal level. Over a long period, German parties had competed for government in relatively clear and ideologically homogeneous camps. However, fragmentation of the party system made majorities for two-party alliances more and more unlikely, and party elites needed to reassess new partnerships. Most of these novel coalitions, like the traffic-light coalition, are also cross-cutting dimensions of political competition in Germany. This raises the question of how voters reflect upon these novel government alternatives and make up their minds about which of them they would like to see in office. In this paper, I argue that a nuanced view on issues rather than general ideology offers more precise insights on the origins of voters' coalition preferences. Furthermore, as salience theory suggests, not every issue is equally important for every part of the citizenry. Therefore, it is expected that the effects of voter-coalition distance as well as intracoalition heterogeneity on specific issues are moderated by individuals' saliency of the respective issues. These expectations are tested using data from the 2021 preelection cross-section survey of the German Longitudinal Election Study. The results emphasize the relevance of specific issues as well as salience in the formation of voters' coalition preferences.

Objective: We test whether real online-user mating behavior corresponds with expectations from both the sociobiological and social perspectives and explore the age differentials that individuals opt for when searching for a mate and how this evolves relative to the user’s age and gender. Background: Age plays a vital role in partner choice. Previous studies have focused primarily on age differences between couples and their self-reported preferences for partners of a certain age. However, little is known about how age affects behavior in the online dating market. Method: We use behavioral data from a Czech online dating app, Pinkilin and analyze 197,519 invitations that users sent to each other in July 2017. Results: Men strongly prefer young women, and women prefer partners of their age or slightly older. At older ages, men’s preference for younger women widens, while women's preferences become more diverse. Homogamous tendencies are stronger among younger users and women. Conclusion: Overall, our results corroborate those of previous research on online dating, but we extend this research in terms of age differences in the Czech context.

The politics of representation has become increasingly complex in recent years. Amid weakening traditional political cleavages, the emergence of new political divides and mounting anti-elitism that have helped the rise of radical populist parties, voters face significant cross-pressures when casting their ballots. Despite a wealth of studies on the role of issue preferences in voting behaviour, there are still many unknowns when it comes to understanding how voters trade off competing issue preferences against each other. Studying issue trade-offs is also important against the backdrop of the well-documented preferences of radical left and right voters for redistribution and restrictive immigration policies, respectively. To investigate the strength of issue preferences among radical left, radical right and mainstream party voters and the willingness to compromise on their most important issues, we conducted a conjoint survey experiment with 2,000 participants in France, Germany, Italy and Spain. The voting scenario in the experiment featured proposals on salient political issues and different (non)populist stances on political representation. The results from the cross-country study, as well as a large replication study with a sample of 4,000 German respondents, show that voters of radical right parties are willing to accept large trade-offs regarding their other issue preferences as long as their preference for restrictive immigration policies is fulfilled. Differently, radical left, Green and mainstream party voters have a more variegated range of issue preferences, some of them so strong that they are not traded off for their preferred redistribution and European Union integration positions, respectively. The findings shed light on trade-offs related to emerging issues such as climate change and the distinct logics behind support for radical parties. They also have implications for the electoral prospects of mainstream and radical parties when trying to reposition themselves in the diversifying issue space of contemporary democracies. As such, understanding how voters navigate issue cross-pressures helps to explain the broader dynamics that are (re)configuring political conflict and voting behaviour in Europe.

Immigrants now constitute a sizeable and rapidly growing group among many Western countries' electorates, but analyses of their party preferences remain limited. Theoretically, immigrants' party preferences might be explained with both standard electoral theories and immigrant-specific approaches. In this article, we rigorously test both perspectives against each other using the most recent data from Germany. Applying the Michigan model, with its three central explanatory variables – party identification, issue orientations and candidate evaluations – to the party preferences of immigrant-origin and native voters, we find that this standard model can explain both groups well. In contrast, we find no direct effects of the most prominent immigrant-specific variables, and neither do these meaningfully moderate the Michigan variables. However, we find strong formative effects on the presence of political attitudes and beliefs: immigrants with a longer time spent in Germany, a stronger German identity and less experience of discrimination report significantly fewer item non-responses for the Michigan model's main explanatory variables.

Children’s motivation for the egalitarian allocation of resources is reflected in their allocation of positive and negative resources between themselves and others. In the present study, 6- (n = 29) and 8-year-olds (n = 25) could choose between different allocations of positive and negative resources to themselves and others in a series of games. The other player was either an ingroup member or an outgroup member. Results revealed that, overall and irrespective of resource valence, 8-year-olds were more likely to choose an egalitarian allocation of resources than 6-year-olds. 8-year-olds also shared more positive resources with the outgroup member than 6-year-olds. Children’s egalitarianism is discussed in light of theories of prosocial development., Die Motivation von Kindern, Ressourcen egalitär zu verteilen zeigt sich bei der Verteilung von positiven wie auch negativen Ressourcen zwischen sich selbst und anderen. In dieser Studie konnten 6- (n = 29) und 8-Jährige (n = 25) zwischen verschiedenen Verteilungen von positiven und negativen Ressourcen zwischen sich selbst und einem anderen Kind in einer Reihe von Spielen entscheiden. Das andere Kind war entweder ein Mitglied der Eigengruppe oder ein Mitglied einer Fremdgruppe. Als Ergebnis zeigte sich, dass 8-Jährige häufiger als 6-Jährige unabhängig von der Valenz der Ressource eine Gleichverteilung wählten. Des Weiteren teilten die 8-Jährigen häufiger als 6-Jährige positive Ressourcen egalitär zwischen sich und dem Kind der Fremdgruppe auf. Dieser Egalitarismus bei Kindern wird vor dem Hintergrund von Theorien zur Entwicklung prosozialen Verhaltens diskutiert., Z. Entwicklungspsychol. Paedagog. Psychol.;54(3)

Ranked choice voting (RCV) has become increasingly popular in recent years, as more jurisdictions in the US adopt the voting system for local, state, and federal elections. Though previous studies have found potential benefits of RCV, some evidence suggests ranking multiple candidates instead of choosing one most preferred candidate may be difficult, with potential demographic disparities linked to age, gender, or racial or ethnic identity. Further, these difficulties have been assumed to cause individuals to improperly fill out RCV ballots, such as ranking too many or not enough candidates. This study seeks to answer three interrelated questions: 1) Which demographic groups find it difficult to rank candidates in RCV elections? 2) Who is more likely to cast under-voted ballots (not ranking all candidates)? 3) Is there a relationship between finding RCV voting difficult and the likelihood of casting an under-voted ballot? Using unique national survey data of 2020 Democratic primary candidate preferences, the results indicate most respondents find ranking candidates easy, but older, less interested, and more ideologically conservative individuals find it more difficult. In a hypothetical ranking of primary candidates, 12% of respondents under-voted (did not rank all options). Despite their perceived increased difficulty, older individuals were less likely to under-vote their ballot. No other demographic groups consistently experienced systematic differences in ranking difficulty or under-voting across a series of model specifications. These findings support previous evidence of older voters having increased difficulty, but challenge research assuming difficulty leads to under-voting, and that racial and ethnic groups are disadvantaged by RCV.

Recent research by Taneja et al. suggested that digital infrastructures diminish the generational gap in news use by counteracting preference structures. We expand on this seminal work by arguing that an infrastructural perspective requires overcoming limitations of highly aggregated web tracking data used in prior research. We analyze the individual browsing histories of two representative samples of German Internet users collected in 2012 ( N = 2970) and 2018 ( N = 2045) and find robust evidence for a smaller generational gap in online news use than commonly assumed. While short news website visits mostly demonstrated infrastructural factors, longer news use episodes were shaped more by preferences. The infrastructural role of social media corresponded with reduced news avoidance and more varied news repertoires. Overall, the results suggest that research needs to reconsider commonly held premises regarding the uses of digital media in modern high-choice settings.

Electoral competition is a cornerstone of representative democracies. However, measuring its extent and intensity constitutes a challenging task for the discipline. Based on multilevel conceptualizations, we discuss three different measures of political competition (electoral volatility, vote switching, and voters’ availability) and their relation to each other. We argue that electoral volatility and vote switching as indicators of electoral competitiveness tend to misestimate the degree of competition in multiparty systems. As an alternative, we propose focusing on the individual’s propensity to vote for different parties, i.e. electoral availability. Using data provided by the European Election Studies, we compare availability to electoral volatility and vote switching in the framework of necessary and sufficient conditions. Our regression results show that operationalizing electoral competitiveness based on voter availability – which is increasingly retrievable from cross-national voter surveys – helps to avoid type-II errors, i.e. identifying competitive elections as less or non-competitive.

In this paper is discussed the so-called "glass ceiling hypothesis". The argument says that women's performance and salary levels are artificially limited by reason of sex, instead of due to their preferences when choosing their studies and professional career according to their interests and self-perceived competence. The educational and occupational behaviors of the Spanish population of both sexes during the last two decades are shown here, highlighting that in both cases they offer a stable and consistent structure that can hardly be forced exogenously. En este trabajo se tematiza la llamada "hipótesis del techo de cristal", que sostiene que los niveles de desempeño y de salario de las mujeres están limitados artificialmente por razón de sexo, en vez de corresponder a sus preferencias a la hora de escoger su formación y orientarse laboralmente con arreglo a sus intereses y a la autopercepción competencial. Se muestran conjuntamente los comportamientos educativos y ocupacionales de la población española de ambos sexos durante los dos últimos decenios, poniéndose de relieve que en uno y otro caso ofrecen una estructura estable y consistente que difícilmente puede atribuirse a una imposición exógena determinante.

Ultimately, electoral democracy is about governments doing what citizens want. However, considerable evidence shows that parties influence citizens’ preferences. Most studies on party influence rely on experimental designs that present participants with parties’ positions. The disadvantage of experiments is that many citizens are already aware of those positions, thus underestimating party influence. Very few studies assess reactions to real changes in party positions, which avoids this limitation. We break new ground by assessing the impact of changes in coalition governments, which lead parties to express different positions for reasons that are partly exogenous to elite and mass preferences, on partisans’ attitudes. Using panel data from the German Longitudinal Election Study (GLES), we leverage a major coalition change by Angela Merkel in Germany in 2013. We find that this change influenced the preferences of partisans of the coalition parties. Our findings have significant implications for how we think about democratic representation in multi-party contexts.

Examining the German case in the wider Western European context for the period 1996–2017, the chapter investigates the role of supply and demand factors for vote switching in general and switching to right-wing populist parties in particular. Combining survey data from the CSES with party data from the Manifesto Project, the chapter shows that the growing success of right-wing populist parties, in Germany just as in other Western European countries, was a response to programmatic moves of mainstream center-left and center-right parties to the left. In general, voters' movements between parties did not follow a symmetric pattern. Changes to parties further left came about as responses to increasing voter-party distances on the socio-economic dimension. In the more recent past, switches to parties further right and, in particular, right-wing populist parties like the German AfD became more frequent, and they were associated with increasing distances on the socio-cultural dimension. The open access publication of the edited volume "The Changing German Voter" was financially supported by the Leibniz Association’s Open Access Publication Fund for Monographs, the University of Mannheim, and the DGfW.

This paper analyses the role and the level of impact that different demographic factors have on buying preferences during the selection process between local and imported goods in developing and emerging economies, with a specific focus on the Kosovo region. A total of 630 questionnaires were distributed, from which 536 valid responses and an empirical study is applied to test the hypothesis. A probability sample (randomly selected), which was stratified by seven regions throughout the country was applied, by covering all levels of the society, cultural background, different locations (urban and rural), different levels of education, and income. Some of the respondents have shown a preference for imported goods and were willing to pay a price premium for it based on the quality offered by top producers (around 41.79%). Whereas, 58.21% of respondents prefer local products. It is proven that there is a correlation between demographic factors and buying preferences process when deciding between local and imported products. Whereas, price is considered as the main factor in the buying process in developing countries, due to the low income, whereas the level of imported products depends on the country’s ability to fulfill the local needs with local products.

It has become almost a truism that parliamentary elections have become more personalized. However, evidence for this proposition among voters is relatively mixed and we lack a quantification of leader inspired voting. Using data from Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES) project and consistent measures of leader and party popularity across 86 parliamentary elections in 31 polities between 1996 and 2019, we break new ground in the study of behavioral personalization in several respects. First, we provide a consistent and longitudinal test of leader inclined voting, separate from party evaluations, in the form of a vote-leader/party favorite alignment index. Our results show 6% of voters align their vote with their favorite leader solely, and one in five voters align their vote primarily with their favorite leader. While significant, more voters align their vote with their favorite party. Second, we find that leader motivated voting is most prevalent among non-partisans, older voters, and in elections where ideological polarization is low. Third, we demonstrate that voters solely motivated by leaders are most likely to switch their votes between elections. Our results have implications for our understanding of leaders’ impact on elections.

Wie die AfD und PEGIDA in Deutschland haben auch viele andere populistische Parteien und Bewegungen in Westeuropa im letzten Jahrzehnt sehr erfolgreich Bürgerinnen und Bürger für ihre Politik mobilisiert. Viele dieser Parteien teilen das Narrativ einer anhaltenden gesellschaftlichen Abwärtsentwicklung, die nur durch Intervention der populistischen Führung gestoppt werden kann. Populistische Parteien fordern die stärkere Implementierung der Volksinteressen in den politischen Prozess und die Absetzung der abgehobenen (politischen) Eliten. Unterschiedliche politik- und kommunikationswissenschaftliche Studien legen einen Zusammenhang von Populismus, Krise und substanzieller politischer Beteiligung nahe. Dieses Papier verknüpft die bisherigen Erklärungsansätze, indem es testet, ob entsprechende politische Präferenzen und die Kommunikation von Parteien in sozialen Medien das Partizipationsverhalten erklären können. Die Ergebnisse einer Online-Umfrage mit integriertem Experiment (N= 1.696) belegen, dass populistische Einstellungen sowohl die Wahlabsicht für die AfD als auch die Protestintention positiv beeinflussen, während gesellschaftliche Unzufriedenheit die populistische Parteiwahl, nicht aber Protest vorhersagt. Gleichzeitig finde ich in der empirischen Analyse keine Hinweise auf eine mobilisierende Wirkung populistischer oder krisenhafter Kommunikation. Durch die vergleichende Betrachtung von Angebots- und Nachfrageseite leistet dieses Papier damit einen Beitrag zur Erklärung der Dynamiken populistischer Mobilisierung.

This chapter asks how electoral competition changed from 2013 to 2017 in East and West Germany. Following Sartori's understanding of party systems as systems of interactions resulting from inter-party competition, it focuses on the content-related properties of the German party system. Combining data from the GLES 2013 and 2017 voter and candidate surveys, it investigates, first, the extent of electoral competition in terms of overlapping electoral support of party pairs and, second, how the establishment of the AfD changed the substantial structure underlying electoral competition in East and West Germany. Findings suggest that electoral competition in Germany is best described as three-dimensional. Whereas regional differences result from different voter preferences regarding policy issues, temporal differences are essentially the result of the changing relevance of the socio-economic and socio-cultural issue dimensions but also a newly emerged populist–pluralist divide. The open access publication of the edited volume "The Changing German Voter" was financially supported by the Leibniz Association’s Open Access Publication Fund for Monographs, the University of Mannheim, and the DGfW.

Road transportation is responsible for an increasing share of global greenhouse gas and local air pollutant emissions. Consequently, it plays a central role in fighting climate change and major human health challenges, as well as reducing the associated societal costs. This dissertation investigates the preferences of German private households when making their vehicle purchase decisions – i.e. choices of a specific fuel type or propulsion technology and a specific body type – and primarily discusses the measures needed to increase the adoption of alternative fuel vehicles (AFVs), explicitly taking car buyers’ preference heterogeneity into account. For this purpose, actual and hypothetical vehicle purchases of recent or potential future buyers of new passenger cars are assessed in three distinct but interrelated parts. Based on data gathered in a nationwide survey and by applying various specifications of logistic regression models, willingness-to-pay values for vehicle attribute improvements are calculated, and future market shares of different AFVs are predicted for a broad range of possible technical improvements or policy actions in a scenario analysis. Building upon these results, recommendations are derived in order to support decision-makers in creating tailored and economically viable products, marketing and communication strategies, or policy measures to encourage car buyers’ body type shifting (e.g. from larger to smaller vehicles), fuel type switching (e.g. from fossil-fueled vehicles to AFVs), or both.

The article analyses the neighbourhood effect in the voting behaviour of the Latvians at the four recent parliamentary elections, the ethnic and national leaning of parties considered. The study expands a set of electoral geography tools by adding modern techniques of spatial analysis as well as by increasing the knowledge on the position of the Russian speakers within Latvia’s political party landscape. The research aims to evaluate the role of the neighbourhood effect at Latvian elections and identify stable spatial voting clusters. The degree of spatial autocorrelation and changes in it were analysed for each parliamentary party and the non-parliamentary but still influential Latvian Russian Union (LRU). Statistically significant spatial clusters of high and low support were identified and compared; their steadiness over the study period was examined. The structure of these clusters is generally the same for the ‘Russian’ parties (Harmony and the LRU), whilst the ‘Latvian’ parties are characterized by greater spatial diversity. The analysis shows that regions bordering on Russia have clear spatial clusters where election results correspond to the parties’ attitudes towards Russian speakers and the Russian Federation. The ‘Russian’ parties and those more or less favourably disposed to Russian speakers (For a Good Latvia, For Latvia from the Heart) have clusters of high support in the area and the ‘Latvian’ parties of low. This pattern, however, may be due to the high proportion of the non-Latvian population in Latgale (a region with strong historical connections with Russia) and the character of the development of the border area, rather than to the proximity to the Russian border.

The hermit crab Cilbanarius erythropus lacks protection of his sensitive peon and therefore needs robust shells of gastropodous to live in and get the possibility of retraction. This function of protection is only warranted in intact shells. In nature there is no oversupply of eligible shells and therefore damaged shells have to be used, too. Two kinds of damage are found in the filed, first shells that are reduced convolution which hinders retraction, and second perforated shells, which leave the peon uncovered. In a test of voice we determined the preference between those kinds of damage. The results show that with shells of Monoton lineata the C. erythropus prefers perforated shells, whereas with Nucella lapillus the shells with reduced convolution are preferred. Dem Einsiedlerkrebs Cilbanarius erythropus fehlt der Schutz seines empfindlichen Peons und braucht daher robuste Schalen von Schnecken, um darin zu leben und die Möglichkeit zu haben, sich zurückzuziehen. Diese Schutzfunktion ist nur bei intakten Schalen gewährleistet. In der Natur gibt es kein Überangebot an geeigneten Schalen und daher müssen auch beschädigte Schalen verwendet werden. Zwei Arten von Beschädigungen werden in dem Feld gefunden, erstens Schalen mit reduzierter Faltung, die das Zurückziehen behindern, und zweitens perforierte Schalen, die den Peon unbedeckt lassen. In einem Stimmtest haben wir die Präferenz zwischen diesen Schadensarten ermittelt. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass C. erythropus bei Schalen von Monoton lineata perforierte Schalen bevorzugt, während bei Nucella lapillus die Schalen mit reduzierter Faltung bevorzugt werden.