What are the possible/likely coalition options for 🇩🇪’s next government? Take a tour with @jonworth to see what’s in stock
Neat summary of where we stand by Isabelle Hertner
What we were reading: Weather experience and climate opinion
How important are local weather extremes for citizens’ attitudes towards climate change? Humans are generally stupid and tend to ignore things that seem abstract and will happen in the future (even if the future is not very distant). There is a small-ish literature on how Americans’ climate opinion responds to more extreme/hotter weather. And then…
What we were reading: Voting as group behaviour
How important are social incentives for turnout? Since the earliest election studies, we have assumed that social networks are important for turnout, and that voting more generally is a form of social behaviour (and also a habit). While there are heaps of data to support these ideas, this study from Denmark is quite something. Thanks…
Interview with CNN: Germany’s pandemic response (hah!)
CNN had a chat with Wolfgang Merkel, Gero Neugebauer, and yours truly about the highs and lows of Germany’s pandemic response. Of course, the media are more interested in agency than in structure, but I managed to sneak in a concept or two. And so this may (or may not) be the first piece on…
Interview about the Greens with Al Jazeera
The Greens will probably be an important part of the next German government and might even get the chancellorship. I had a virtual chat about the party with Ruairi Casey, who used some of my words. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/4/19/could-a-green-party-chancellor-lead-germany
This is excellent
What we were reading: The gender gap in youth political participation
Is there a political gender gap amongst young Germans? Gender gaps are everywhere, but there are some places where they are less likely. According to the authors, young Germans represent a least likely case for gender differences in political activity: female levels of educational attainment are actually higher than male ones, and adolescence is a…
What we were reading: Campaign Effects and Issue Voting
How much of a difference do campaigns make? Conventional wisdom says that electoral campaigns remind voters who they are and what they want. So they do not change much, but still matter, because the outcome could be very different without all the reminders. This little gem here is a bit unusual, because it tracks a…
What we were reading: Cross-cutting exposure and political participation
Does cross-cutting exposure help or hinder participation? Somewhat predictably, I fell off the seminar-blogging wagon shortly after the break. But hey, this is a digital semester, so we have actual archived notes of our virtual meetings. One of the first texts we read in the new year was this one: a specimen of the meta-analytic…