The rise of Germany’s new far right party AfD has been nothing but meteoric. But recently, the party’s image has suffered two significant blows.
Very happy: The folks at Sage have kindly signed a contract with Jocelyn Evans, Michael Lewis-Beck, and my own good self to edit a two-volume tome on Electoral Behaviour in their Handbook series. The final product will have some 50 chapters on all aspects of psephology and should come out in 2016. Cat-herding 50+ academics…
I’ve recently discovered Rfacebook, which lets you access public information on Facebook from R. In terms of convenience, no package for R or Python that I have seen so far comes near. Get yourself a long-lived token, store it as a variable, and put all posts on a fanpage you are interested in into one…
[caption id="attachment_13291" align="alignright" width="225"] An Imperial Duck. Because.[/caption] My wonderful PhD students are running a series of short online surveys, two of them with a slightly unusual and rather intriguing format. If you read German, do them a favour and click on the link. You should be done in 10 minutes or less. And while…
When I drove home from work a couple of days ago, I noticed a policeman flagging down precisely every tenth car in the other lane and directing the drivers towards a lay-by. He was in uniform, wearing hi-vis gear and his government-issued Walther, so non-compliance was clearly not an issue. The scene was completed by a large billboard, stating that this was no ordinary vehicle spot check but rather a road use survey. I badly want these guys on our team.
Once more, I have updated the ever more eclectic bibliography on the Extreme Right in Europe. Help making it slightly less eclectic by mailing/tweeting/facebooking (is that a thing now?) suggestions for additions.
Today, I’m guest blogging on the #EP2014 results at the LSE’s execellent EUROPOPP blog. Click here for a number of opinionated and short “expert reactions” to yesterdays’s train wreck election.
Those old enough to remember that Bill Murray had a career before Lost in Translation (or to remember Bill Murray) will instantly recognise this scene: Punxsutawney Phil is predicting six more electoral cycles of political misery for Germany’s Liberal Democrats.
Amidst the ongoing leadership crisis, financial doom and the possibility of a ban, Germany’s NPD is fighting a desperate European campaign. Here is the link to the interview. Photo by qousqous
The Pirates are running a rather cheap electoral campaign: No faces (models or not) but only drawings in their trademark orange/blue tones. Their stinginess even extends to the meaning of their slogans. I was a bit thrown off by “Borders are so 80”, then discovered the small “er”, so borders are so 1980s, apparently. Well,…