Kai Arzheimer » election http://www.kai-arzheimer.com/blog A political science blog Sat, 21 Jan 2012 19:06:37 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 Miniskirts and Genocide: Inside the Topsy-Turvy World of NPD Propagandahttp://www.kai-arzheimer.com/blog/miniskirts-and-genocide-inside-the-topsy-turvy-world-of-npd-propaganda/ http://www.kai-arzheimer.com/blog/miniskirts-and-genocide-inside-the-topsy-turvy-world-of-npd-propaganda/#comments Wed, 02 Mar 2011 20:13:00 +0000 kai http://www.kai-arzheimer.com/blog/?p=676 In the olden days, the world was simple. The average extreme right party was strictly socially conservative, to say the least. Abortion and homosexuality were considered sinful, mostly so because both practices deprived the fatherland of future soldiers and potential mothers of even more soldiers. So sex was supposed to be intramarital and had one purpose only: to procreate for the fatherland. Then came Pim Fortuyn and somewhat confused the message, but this was of little concern to members of the German NPD, who sometimes seem to live blissfully in a parallel universe where the 1930s never came to an end.

miniskirt minaret Miniskirts and Genocide: Inside the Topsy Turvy World of NPD Propaganda

NPD campaign poster, 2011

Or so I thought until this morning. It’s election time in Rhineland-Palatinate, which means great fun, because campaigns at the state level often have their own disarming and rather amateurish charm. On my way to work, I drove past at least a dozen very conventional NPD posters showcasing the party’s “Müttergehalt” (salary for mothers) policy that is supposed to stop the “Volkstod” (genocide – they really hate foreign words). But then I nearly crashed my car laughing out loud when I spotted this little gem, campaigning, as you would have guessed, for “miniskirts instead of minarets”. Ah, the demand for more miniskirts – always at the fore of the minds of  every self-respecting, socially conservative nationalist movement. About time that someone dared to speak out.

 

The untrained, illiterate observer might of course mistakenly believe that the NPD is finally defending the unalienable right of the Aryan hooker to strut her stuff while eying a collection of strangely shaped dildos. As always, it is all in the eye of the beholder.

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]]> http://www.kai-arzheimer.com/blog/miniskirts-and-genocide-inside-the-topsy-turvy-world-of-npd-propaganda/feed/ 3 Analysis of Voting Figures in the 2009 Iranian Presidential Electionhttp://www.kai-arzheimer.com/blog/analysis-of-voting-figures-in-the-2009-iranian-presidential-election/ http://www.kai-arzheimer.com/blog/analysis-of-voting-figures-in-the-2009-iranian-presidential-election/#comments Mon, 22 Jun 2009 22:19:51 +0000 kai http://www.kai-arzheimer.com/blog/?p=282
LocationIran Analysis of Voting Figures in the 2009 Iranian Presidential Election
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Chatham House and the Institute of Iranian Studies at St. Andrews have published a preliminary analysis of the recent election in Iran. The paper (though it is based on official stats) suggests that the election was indeed rigged to a considerable degree. Here is the complete analysis of the Iranian Presidential Election 2009.

p.s. Just discovered that Ahmadinejad has his own blog. The world must surely be coming to an end. Then again, it has not been updated since 2007.

Analysis of Voting Figures in the 2009 Iranian Presidential Election
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]]> http://www.kai-arzheimer.com/blog/analysis-of-voting-figures-in-the-2009-iranian-presidential-election/feed/ 3 National Content on European Election Postershttp://www.kai-arzheimer.com/blog/national-content-on-european-election-posters/ http://www.kai-arzheimer.com/blog/national-content-on-european-election-posters/#comments Sun, 31 May 2009 17:00:06 +0000 kai http://www.kai-arzheimer.com/blog/?p=275 Next week, the European Parliament will celebrate its 7th direct election. However, this will be the culmination of 27 national campaigns. Here is a post on the lack of truly European content in the European I wrote for Andrea Römmele’s and Thorsten Faas’ “Wahlen nach Zahlen” blog (in German).

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]]> http://www.kai-arzheimer.com/blog/national-content-on-european-election-posters/feed/ 0 Which party should I vote for in the European Elections?http://www.kai-arzheimer.com/blog/which-party-should-i-vote-for-in-the-european-elections/ http://www.kai-arzheimer.com/blog/which-party-should-i-vote-for-in-the-european-elections/#comments Thu, 28 May 2009 21:48:31 +0000 kai http://www.kai-arzheimer.com/blog/?p=269 With the upcoming EP elections, I felt obliged to check out the profiler sites my colleagues have put on the internet. I started with Germany’s wahl-o-mat that has been around for a number of years. After evaluating 30 statements, the program decided that I should vote for the German Liberals, which was not such a big surprise. The Bavarian Christian Democrats and the New Left Party were the biggest distance away from my ideal point, not least because my preferences seem to be more pro-European than these parties.

profiler 1 300x183 Which party should I vote for in the European Elections?

Why I should vote for the LibDems (maybe)

Given that I’m going to vote in the UK, I next tried the EU Profiler, which is an international project that aims at providing the relevant information on party positions for all 27 member states. After evaluating a new set of another 30 items, I was presented with a fancy two-dimensional graph that shows that I should vote for the UK LibDems, although they look more like my least-bad option since the policy space around my ideal point is not exactly crowded. This is because I am luke-warm (but warm) when it comes to European Integration plus a bit of a lefty when it comes to the “socioeconomic” dimension. This dimension, however, looks a bit dodgy, because according to the map, the Tories would be ever so slightly to the left of Labour. Well, maybe they are. At least no one suggest that I should vote UKIP or BNP (who sent me a flyer the other week, suggesting that all those immigrants should leave the UK).

In a bold move I switched from British to German parties and was a little surprised to learn that I should vote New Left, which is reasonably close to my ideal point while the Liberals are rather far away. So it would seem that I suffer from a national-political personality split.

profiler 2 300x182 Which party should I vote for in the European Elections?

Should I vote for the Left party?!?

Still not content with the results, I returned to the wahl-o-mat and discovered that they too have teamed-up with researchers from other countries, meaning that we have apparently two competing pan-European profiler projects. So I answered a final UK-specific questionnaire and was reassured that I should indeed vote for the LibDems, though apparently for different reasons.

While their accuracy of the results might be debatable, these tools provide a lot of information and are great fun.

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]]> http://www.kai-arzheimer.com/blog/which-party-should-i-vote-for-in-the-european-elections/feed/ 5 Library of Electoral Behaviour/Electoral Behaviorhttp://www.kai-arzheimer.com/blog/library-of-electoral-behaviour/ http://www.kai-arzheimer.com/blog/library-of-electoral-behaviour/#comments Sat, 12 Jul 2008 17:52:56 +0000 kai http://polsci.wordpress.com/?p=41 Library of Electoral Behaviour/Electoral Behavior

As a subdiscipline, the study of electoral behavior (or “psephology”) begins with a handful of monographs that were published in the 1940s, 50s and 60s. It’s amazing to see how concepts and ideas that were developed in Downs’ “Economic Theory of Democracy” or in the “American Voter” by Campbell et al. some 50 years ago inform our work to the present day. However, the study of electoral behaviour (or electoral behavior – the publisher keep changing the title just to confuse me) did obviously not end with these holy books. From the 1960s on, the discipline was increasingly defined by a number of ground breaking articles that were published in professional journals.

This collection gave us the opportunity to bring together 66 articles which – in our humble view – define the discipline, represent important new departures, or bring together the knowledge we have on a given subject. As a friend of mine wisely remarked, at $ 950 the collection might be slightly underpriced. Then again, if you teach a course on electoral behaviour or political sociology, or if just want to get an overview of electoral studies, getting much if not most of the important stuff in one four-volume-1640-pages book is really a bargain. Maybe you should invite your librarian for a coffee. Make it a large one.

What the Library of Electoral Behaviour gives you is a full introduction to the study of electoral behaviour plus:

Socio-Political Models

  1. Lipset, S. M. and S. Rokkan (eds.) (1967) [‘Introduction’] in Party Systems and Voter Alignments: Cross-National Perspectives, New York: The Free Press..

  2. Erikson, Robert, John H. Goldthorpe and Lucienne Portocarero (1979), ‘Intergenerational Class Mobility in Three Western European Societies. England, France and Sweden’, British Journal of Sociology 30: 415-441

  3. Alford, Robert R. (1962): A Suggested Index of the Association of Social Class and Voting, in: Public Opinion Quarterly 26, S. 417–425

  4. Lijphart, Arend: Religious vs. Linguistic vs. Class Voting: The “Crucial Experiment” of Comparing Belgium, Canada, South Africa, and Switzerland, The American Political Science Review, Vol. 73, No. 2. (Jun., 1979), pp. 442-458.

  5. Class Mobility and Political Preferences: Individual and Contextual Effects Nan Dirk De Graaf; Paul Nieuwbeerta; Anthony Heath The American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 100, No. 4. (Jan., 1995), pp. 997-1027.

  6. The Developmental Theory of the Gender Gap: Women’s and Men’s Voting Behavior in Global Perspective Ronald Inglehart; Pippa Norris ‎. (Oct., 2000), pp. 441-463.

  7. Alan Zuckerman (1975) ‘Political Cleavage: a conceptual and theoretical analysis’, British Journal of Political Science, 5: 231-248.

  8. Key, V. O. “A Theory of Critical Elections.” The Journal of Politics 17, no. 1 (1955): 3-18

  9. Belknap, G., and A. Campbell. “Political Party Identification and Attitudes toward Foreign Policy.” The Public Opinion Quarterly 15, no. 4 (1951): 601-23.

  10. Converse, P. (1966) ‘The concept of a normal vote’ in A. Campbell et al (eds.) Elections and the Political Order, New York, John Wiley.

  11. Jennings, M.K. and R. Niemi (1968) ‘The transmission of political values from parent to child’, American Political Science Review, 62: 169-84.

  12. Converse, Philip E. (1964), ‘The Nature of Belief Systems in Mass Publics’, in: David E. Apter (ed). Ideology and Discontent, pp. 206-261, New York: Free Press

  13. Jackson, J. (1983). “The systematic beliefs of the mass public: estimating policy preferences with survey data” in Journal of Politics, vol. 45: 840-58.

  14. Markus, Gregory B., and Philip E. Converse. “A Dynamic Simultaneous Equation Model of Electoral Choice.” The American Political Science Review 73, no. 4 (1979): 1055-70.

  15. Fiorina, Morris P. “An Outline for a Model of Party Choice.” American Journal of Political Science 21, no. 3 (1977): 601-25.

  16. Bartels, Larry M. “Partisanship and Voting Behavior, 1952-1996.” American Journal of Political Science 44 (2000): 35-50.

Cognition and the Voter Calculus

  1. Hotelling, Harold (1929), ‘Stability in Competition’, The Economic Journal 39(153): 41-57.

  2. Riker, William H., and Peter C. Ordeshook. “A Theory of the Calculus of Voting.” American Political Science Review 62 (1968): 25-42.

  3. Ferejohn, J. and M. Fiorina (1974) ‘The paradox of not voting’, American Political Science Review, 68: 525-536.

  4. Niemi, R. (1976) ‘Costs of voting and nonvoting’, Public Choice, 27: 115-119.

  5. Grofman, Bernard. “Is Turnout the Paradox That Ate Rational Choice Theory?” In Information, Participation, and Choice. An Economic Theory of Democracy in Perspective, edited by Bernard Grofman, 93-103. Ann Arbor: Michigan University Press, 1993.

  6. Stokes, Donald E. “Spatial Models of Party Competition.” The American Political Science Review 57 (1963): 368-77.

  7. Grofman, Bernard. “The Neglected Role of the Status Quo in Models of Issue Voting.” The Journal of Politics 47, no. 1 (1985): 230-37.

  8. Heath, A., G. Evans and J. Martin (1994) “The measurement of core beliefs and values: the development of balanced socialist / laissez faire and libertarian / authoritarian scales”, British Journal of Political Science, vol. 24: 115-32

  9. Rabinowitz, George, and Stuart Elaine MacDonald. “A Directional Theory of Issue Voting.” American Political Science Review 83 (1989): 93-121.

  10. Iversen, T. (1994) ‘Political leadership and representation in Western democracies: a test of three models of voting’, American Journal of Political Science, 38: 45-74.

  11. Abramowitz, Alan I. “The Impact of a Presidential Debate on Voter Rationality.” American Journal of Political Science 22, no. 3 (1978): 680-90.

  12. Petrocik, John R. “Issue Ownership in Presidential Elections, with a 1980 Case Study.” American Journal of Political Science 40 (1996): 825-50.

  13. Budge, Ian (1994), ‘A New Spatial Theory of Party Competition: Uncertainty, Ideology and Policy Equilibria Viewed Comparatively and Temporally’, British Journal of Political Science 24: 443-467

  14. Sears, David O., Richard R. Lau, Tom R. Tyler und Harris M. Jr. Allen (1980): Interest vs. Symbolic Politics in Policy Attitudes and Presidential Voting, in: American Political Science Review 74, S. 670–684.

  15. Quattrone, G. and A. Tversky (1988) ‘Contrasting rational and psychological analyses of political choice’, American Political Science Review, 82: 719-736.

  16. Aldrich, John H., John L. Sullivan, and Eugene Borgida. “Foreign Affairs and Issue Voting: Do Presidential Candidates “Waltz before a Blind Audience?”" The American Political Science Review 83, no. 1 (1989): 123-41.

  17. Marcus, G. and M. MacKuen (1993) ‘Anxiety, enthusiasm, and the vote: the motivational underpinnings of learning and involvement during presidential campaigns’, American Political Science Review, 87: 672-685.

Forecasting and Electoral Context

  1. Reif, Karlheinz, and Hermann Schmitt. “Nine National Second-Order Elections: A Systematic Framework for the Analysis of European Elections Results.” European Journal of Political Research 8 (1980): 3-44.

  2. Jackman, R. and R. Miller (1995) ‘Voter turnout in the industrial democracies during the 1980s’, Comparative Political Studies, 27: 467-492.

  3. Leighley, J. and J. Nagler (1992) ‘Individual and systemic influences on turnout: who votes?’, Journal of Politics, 54: 718-740.

  4. van der Eijk, C., M. Franklin and M. Marsh (1996). “What voters teach us about Europe-wide elections: what Europe-wide elections teach us about voters” in Electoral Studies, vol. 15 no.2: 149-66.

  5. Mueller, J. (1970) ‘Presidential popularity from Truman to Johnson’, American Political Science Review, 64: 18-34.

  6. Kramer, G. (1971) ‘Short-term fluctuations in US voting behaviour, 1896-1964’, American Political Science Review, 65: 131-143.

  7. Nannestad, Peter, and Martin Paldam. “The Vp-Function – a Survey of the Literature on Vote and Popularity Functions after 25 Years.” Public Choice 79, no. 3-4 (1994): 213-45.

  8. Lewis-Beck, M. (1997) ‘Who’s the chef? Economic voting under a dual executive’, European Journal of Political Research, 31: 315-325.

  9. Conover, P. and S. Feldman (1986) ‘Emotional reactions to the economy: I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore’, American Journal of Political Science, 30: 50-78.

  10. Powell, G. B. and G. Whitten (1993) ‘A cross-national analysis of economic voting: taking account of the political context’, American Journal of Political Science, 37: 391-414.

  11. Sanders, D. (2000) ‘The real economy and the perceived economy in popularity functions: how much do voters need to know? A study of British data, 1974–97’, Electoral Studies, 19: 275-294.

  12. Evans, G. and R. Andersen (2006) ‘The political conditioning of economic perceptions,’ Journal of Politics, 68: 194-207..

  13. Gelman, Andrew and King, Gary: Why are American Presidential Election Campaigns Polls so Variable when Votes are so predictable, in: APSR 1993 409-451

  14. Krosnick, J. and D. Kinder (1990) ‘Altering the foundations of support for the President through priming’, American Political Science Review, 84: 497-512.

  15. Ansolabehere, S., S. Iyengar, A. Simon and N. Valentino (1994) ‘Does attack advertising demobilize the electorate’, American Political Science Review, 88: 829-838.

  16. Bartels, L. (1993) ‘Messages received: the political impact of media exposure’, American Political Science Review, 87: 267-285.

  17. MacKuen, Michael, and Courtney Brown. “Political Context and Attitude Change.” The American Political Science Review 81, no. 2 (1987): 471-90.

Debates and Methodology

  1. Kliemt, Hartmut. “The Veil of Insignificance.” Europäische Zeitschrift für Politische Ökonomie / European Journal of Political Economy 2 (1986): 333-44.

  2. Fishbein, Martin, and Icek Ajzen. “Attitudes and Voting Behaviour: An Application of the Theory of Reasoned Action.” In Progress in Applied Social Psychology, edited by Geoffrey M. and Davis Stephenson, James H., 253-313. Chichester: John Wiley \& Sons, 1981

  3. Key, V. O. . “Secular realignment and the party system”, The Journal of Politics, 21: 198-210.

  4. Inglehart, Ronald (1971): The Silent Revolution in Europe: Intergenerational Change in Post-Industrial Societies, in:American Political Science Review 65, S. 991–1017

  5. Dalton, Russell J. “Cognitive Mobilization and Partisan Dealignment in Advanced Industrial Democracies.” Journal of Politics 46 (1984): 264-84.

  6. Converse, Philip E., and Gregory B. Markus. “Plus Ça Change… The New Cps Election Study Panel.” American Political Science Review 73 (1979): 32-49.

  7. Carmines, Edward G., and James A. Stimson. “Issue Evolution, Population Replacement, and Normal Partisan Change.” American Political Science Review 75 (1981): 107-18.

  8. Box-Steffensmeier, Janet M., and Renée M. Smith. “The Dynamics of Aggregate Partisanship.” American Journal of Political Science 90 (1996): 567-80.

  9. Abramowitz, Alan I., and Kyle L. Saunders. “Ideological Realignment in the US Electorate.” The Journal of Politics 60, no. 3 (1998): 634-52.

  10. van der Eijk, C., and B. Niemöller (1979). “Recall accuracy and its determinants” in Acta Politica, vol. 14 no. 3: 289-342.

  11. van der Eijk, C. (2002) ‘Design issue in electoral research: taking care of (core) business’, Electoral Studies, 21: 189-206.

  12. Pattie, C. and R. Johnston (1995) ‘“It’s not like that round here”: region, economic evaluations and voting at the 1992 British general election’, European Journal of Political Research, 28: 1-32.

  13. Gerber, Alan S., and Donald P. Green. “The Effects of Canvassing, Telephone Calls, and Direct Mail on Voter Turnout: A Field Experiment.” American Political Science Review 94, no. 3 (2000): 653-63.

  14. Robinson, William S. (1950), ‘Ecological Correlation and the Behavior of Individuals’, American Sociological Review 15: 351-357.

  15. Falter, Jürgen W., and Reinhard Zintl. “The Economic Crisis of the 1930s and the Nazi Vote.” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 19 (1988): 55-85. [or King et al.?]

  16. Bassili, John N. 1993. Response Latency Versus Certainty as Indexes of the Strength of Voting Intentions in a Cati Survey. The Public Opinion Quarterly 57:54-61.

  17. Alvarez, Michael R., and Jonathan Nagler. 2000. A New Approach for Modelling Strategic Voting in Multiparty Elections. British Journal of Political Science 30:57-75

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]]> http://www.kai-arzheimer.com/blog/library-of-electoral-behaviour/feed/ 1 Indiana congressional hopeful woos American Neo Nazishttp://www.kai-arzheimer.com/blog/indiana-congressional-hopeful-woos-american-neo-nazis/ http://www.kai-arzheimer.com/blog/indiana-congressional-hopeful-woos-american-neo-nazis/#comments Sun, 04 May 2008 09:40:30 +0000 kai http://polsci.wordpress.com/2008/05/04/indiana-congressional-hopeful-woos-american-neo-nazis/ Zirkle Indiana congressional hopeful woos American Neo NazisThis is hilarious: Tony Zirkle (the chap behind the lectern) is obviously a man who knows how to sink his own campaign before it has even taken off. As part of his bid for a house seat in Indiana, he recently addressed a meeting of American Neo Nazis who were commemorating Hitler’s birthday (have you spotted the neat hand-made “happy birthday” garland in the foreground?). Respectful Insolence has the full story, complete with links to Zirkle’s homepage on which he blames the great porn dragon for the publicity fallout (I kid you not).

In a strange way, the whole scene looks a bit like the set of a slightly less than funny movie. If you grew up in the 1980s, you will get the impression that you have actually seen this film: remember the “I hate Illinois Nazis” moment from the original Blues Brothers movie?Illinois Nazis2 medium Indiana congressional hopeful woos American Neo Nazis

Update: Zirkle was defeated soundly in the primary.

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