European Social Survey to cut 30 items from its core questionnaire
The European Social Survey will drop 30 items from its core questionnaire in round 6 including information on party membership and media use
Updated: Bibliography on the Extreme Right in Western Europe
It’s that time of the year again: I’ve updated my very eclectic and sometimes frankly erratic bibliography on the Extreme Right in Western Europe (aka the (or Radical/Populist/New/Far/Anti-Immigrant Right). Rejoice, PhD students, and leave your dungeons for what remains of spring break!
English Voters Prefer Local Candidates, Ceteris Paribus
The effect of geographical distance between candidate and voter on vote likelihood in the UK is essentially untested. In systems where constituency representatives vie for local inhabitants’ support in elections, candidates living closer to a voter would be expected to have a greater probability of receiving that individual’s support, other things being equal. In this paper, we present a first test of this concept using constituency data (specifically, notice of poll address data) from the British General Election of 2010 and the British Election Survey, together with geographical data from Ordnance Survey and Royal Mail, to test the hypothesis that candidate distance matters in voters’ choice of candidate. Using a conditional logit model, we find that the distance between voter and candidates from the three main parties (Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrat) matters in English constituencies, even when controlling for strong predictors of vote-choice, such as party feeling and incumbency advantage.
New blog on Polish Party Politics
Confused by Civic Platform’s current calamities? Let down by Law and Justice? Perturbed by perm-prone Palikot’s movement (ok, enough of that!)? Ben Stanley, my man in Warsaw, has the answers on his new Polish Party Politics blog. For starters, he brings us lots of beautiful maps like this, which shows the gap between pro-enlightenment forces…
Who is going to succeed Kurt Beck?
You have to be a German state politics aficionado with a certain local bias to find this mildly interesting, but this week we learned that Kurt Beck, the longest-serving German minister president, is having talks with the select group of people who might succeed him. These talks are obviously confidential, so obviously someone leaked the…
Law profs: Dissolution of NRW parliament not strictly necessary
Events in North Rhine-Westphalia are quickly becoming the stuff of legends. The end of the red-green minority government on Wednesday has triggered a series of reshuffles that would make Machiavelli dizzy. And yes, the dissolution of parliament might not have been a constitutional requirement. Sorry for any inconveniences caused.
Snap Election in North Rhine-Westphalia
Much to everybody’s surprise, the minority government in North Rhine-Westphalia collapsed today. Minority governments are a rarity in Germany. The federal constitution, reflecting Germany’s inter-war experience of unstable governments and intense political strife, practically rules them out. Constitutional details at the state level differ but the general assumption is that the government needs the reliable…
What’s the difference between BNP/UKIP voters?
Colleagues/friends Matt Goodwin and Jocelyn Evans have created quite a stir with their report on the attitudes of BNP and UKIP supporters/voters. Obviously, UKIP is not happy at all about being lumped together with what remains of Nick Griffin’s party. Being introduced as a ‘polite alternative’ to the BNP (albeit with a rhetorical question mark)…
Vote Rigging in Devon?
As any fan of Midsomer Murders can testify, the English country side is a beautiful but terrifying place. But this post on the EPOP mailing list is not about mad members of the gentry, vicious vicars or fornicating farmers, but about a potential parish Putin
Sports Cars, Sleaze and Gamma Rays: Rhineland-Palatinate Elects Its FirstRed-Green Government
Just under one year after the fact, here is my analysis of the latest election in Rhineland-Palatinate.
The 2011 election in Rhineland-Palatinate was a political earthquake: Following a string of political scandals, the SPD lost almost ten percentage points of their support, while the CDU could hardly improve on their disastrous 2006 result. The FDP is no longer represented in the state parliament. The Greens more than tripled their last result, allowing them to enter a coalition with the SPD for the first time.
Analyses at the municipal level show that the party improved most in their urban strongholds while still showing a (relatively) weak performance in rural areas. This will make it difficult to sustain the momentum of their victory. Moreover, the SPD is battered and bruised and needs to select a new leader, but veteran minister president Kurt Beck shows no inclination to step down. This does not bode well for a coalition that needs to organise the state’s fiscal consolidation and structural transformation.