In Dresden, the style of political conflict has plunged to a new low yesterday night when Pegida marchers carried gallows “reserved for Merkel and [vice chancellor and SPD leader] Gabriel” – a classic extreme right prop that nicely complements the usual rallying cries of “lying press” and “traitors of the people”. At first I was…
In the last couple of weeks, much has been said and written about the turning tide in German public opinion on refugees, the growing rift between Merkel and the CSU, the potential of a back-bench rebellion against the chancellor and party leader etc. But one of the most interesting (in my book) details is buried…
[caption id="" align="alignright" width="500"] Photo by Metropolico.org [/caption] Yesterday, the AfD has filed legal complaints against the chancellor with the public prosecutor, arguing that suspending the Dublin agreement violates the section of the penal code which bans human trafficking. As political PR stunts go, this is not a bad one: It cost the party exactly…
Handelsblatt’s global (i.e. English language) edition has an informative piece on “Merkel’s Moment of Truth”: her bid to sell her U-turn on refugees in a prime-time talk-show and a number of other venues. The article is garnished with some choice quotes by colleague Gero Neugebauer over at the FU and yours truly. Paywalled, but accessible if you…
Just how badly biased is your pre-election survey? Once the election results are in, our scalar measures B and B_w provide convenient, single number summaries. Our surveybias add-on for Stata will calculate these and other measures from either raw data or from published margins. Its latest iteration (version 1.4) has just appeared on SSC. Surveybias…
One major asset of the pre-Petry AfD was its disconnect from the Extreme Right. But the AfD in Thuringia has always been a funny bunch, and Lucke tried (without success) to remove its leader Björn Höcke from the party. [caption id="" align="alignright" width="500"] Photo by Tekniska museet [/caption] With Lucke gone and asylum applications at…
Artikel im Handelsblatt zum aktuellen Zuwachs der AfD auf Facebook mit einigen kritischen Anmerkungen von mir. Photo by pshab
In der letzten Woche ist meine Einführung zum Thema Strukturgleichungsmodelle bei Springer/VS erschienen. Das Buch zeigt, wie sich die gängigsten Modelle (u.a. einfache und Mehr-Gruppen-Konfirmatorische-Faktorenanalysen (CFA/MGCFA)) in Stata, Lisrel und MPlus realisieren lassen. Die Beispiele stammen aus dem Bereich der politikwissenschaftlichen Einstellungsforschung (Fremdenfeindlichkeit, politische Entfremdung, politisches Interesse …). Alle Beispieldateien können hier heruntergeladen werden. Das…
Social media plays a crucial role for the AfD’s mobilisation strategy, with a reach that goes far beyond the party faithful: The AfD’s Facebook wall has become one of the largest right-wing forums on the German-speaking internet. While a ban on overt extremism is enforced by the party, the wall a platform for homophobes, immigration sceptics, Christian fundamentalists, Prussian nostalgics, anti-feminists, Islam critics, and just about everyone who opposes diversity and the policies that support it. This exploratory paper looks at the role this page is playing not just for the AfD but more generally for the dynamics of the wider, highly diverse right-wing subculture in Germany.
[caption id="" align="alignright" width="500"] Photo by Athos fotografias [/caption] A mere two weeks after being sacked as the AfD’s supreme leader, Bernd Lucke is back as presumably undisputed chair of the new “Alfa” (Allianz für Fortschritt und Aufbruch ~ Alliance for Progress and a New Beginning) party. Apparently, he already envisions a resounding success in…