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February 12, 2024

How powerful are polls in influencing election outcomes?

Werner Krause Werner Krause and Christina Gahn argue that we need to pay more attention to how the media communicates the results of opinion polls to the public. Reporting methodological details, such as margins of error, can alter citizens’ vote choices on election day. This has important implications for elections around the globe Read more
June 27, 2023

Which voters stereotype Muslim politicians as homophobic?

Sanne van Oosten We know that voters stereotype Muslim politicians as homophobic. However, they also project their own ideas about LGBTQ+ rights onto politicians. Sanne van Oosten examines which of these voter tendencies are likely to prevail with which voters, and argues that both strength and type of opinion matter Read more
June 6, 2022

Elections in Colombia: triumph of outsider politics is not solving low voter turnout

Jamie Shenk Colombian voters rejected the political establishment, voting 'outsider' politicians into the run-off for the Colombian presidency. However, understanding who didn’t vote in Colombia’s election tells us more about the state of Colombia’s democracy, writes Jamie Shenk Read more
December 2, 2021

The media chooses who has won (and lost) an election – and it's not just based on objective electoral performance

Katjana Gattermann Media reports on elections often refer to the 'winners' and 'losers'. Yet, especially in multi-party systems, there is often more than one way to interpret election results. How the media frames election results does not depend only on parties’ objective performance, write Katjana Gattermann, Thomas M. Meyer and Katharina Wurzer. It also depends on also on party ideology Read more
November 15, 2021

Electoral systems and the futility of ‘tactical’ voting

Costas Panayotakis Costas Panayotakis recently exposed the fiction in the ‘Every Vote Counts’ thesis. Here, he explores the implications of that fiction for different electoral systems, notably those based on Proportional Representation and First Past the Post. In so doing, he reveals the futility of tactical voting Read more
September 27, 2021

Sport and politics do mix, but match results don’t swing elections

Stefan Müller Several studies have suggested that 'irrelevant events' outside politicians’ control, like sports results or lotteries, affect voting behaviour. Such findings raise worrying questions for democracy. Yet, write Stefan Müller and Liam Kneafsey, these concerns may be overstated. In Ireland, a country with a strong sporting tradition, match outcomes do not influence citizens’ assessments of government performance, or voting behaviour Read more
August 18, 2021

Does terror increase or decrease support for governments? It does both

Resul Umit There is lively debate about the effect of casualties in armed conflicts on public opinion. Do voters rally behind their governments, or punish them for failing to prevent casualties? Resul Umit observes both scenarios at the same time in Turkey, as the public reacts differently to initial and subsequent casualties Read more
August 17, 2021

Why are people with migrant backgrounds so poorly represented in political office in Europe?

Lea Portmann In Switzerland, poor political representation of people with a migrant background is not simply the result of prejudice and deliberate penalising by voters. Lea Portmann and Nenad Stojanović show that it is also caused by voters systematically favouring native ingroup candidates Read more

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Advancing Political Science
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