The Kretschmann Effect: Personalisation and the March 2016 Länder Elections

Blumenberg, Johannes N.; Blumenberg, Manuela S.

doi:10.1080/09644008.2017.1342814

Cited by 7 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 28 publications

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“…Partisan voters tend to give the candidates of their own parties particularly positive ratings (Brettschneider 2001;Anderson and Brettschneider 2003). Similar to the international research literature, studies of candidate voting in Germany did not come up with unequivocal evidence for a long-term process toward more personalized electoral behavior either (Kaase 1994;Ohr 2000;Brettschneider 2001Brettschneider , 2002Pappi and Shikano 2001;Brettschneider and Gabriel 2002;Anderson and Brettschneider 2003;Gabriel and Neller 2005;Blumenberg and Blumenberg 2017). Schoen (2007), e.g., found in a time series analysis that the effects of candidate evaluations on voters' choices between 1980 and 2002 varied between elections but did not increase over time.…”

Section: Partisan Dealignment and The Personalization Of Votingmentioning

confidence: 79%

The Changing German Voter

2022

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Over the past half century, the behavior of German voters has changed profoundly—at first rather gradually but during the last decade at accelerated speed. Electoral decision-making has become much more volatile, rendering election outcomes less predictable. Party system fragmentation intensified sharply. The success of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) put an end to Germany’s exceptionality as one of the few European countries without a strong right-wing populist party. Utilizing a wide range of data compiled by the German Longitudinal Election Study, the book examines changing voters’ behavior in the context of changing parties, campaigns, and media during the period of its hitherto most dramatically increased fluidity at the 2009, 2013, and 2017 federal elections. Guided by the notions of realignment and dealignment, the study addresses three questions: How did the turbulences that increasingly characterize German electoral politics come about? How did they in turn condition voters’ decision-making? How were voters’ attitudes and choices affected by situational factors that pertained to the specifics of particular elections? The book demonstrates how traditional cleavages lost their grip on voters and a new socio-cultural line of conflict became the dominant axis of party competition. A series of major crises, but also programmatic shifts of the established parties promoted this development. It led to a segmentation of the party system that pits the right-wing populist AfD against the traditional parties. The book also demonstrates the relevance of coalition preferences, candidate images as well as media and campaign effects for voters’ attitudes, beliefs, and preferences.

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Section: Partisan Dealignment and The Personalization Of Votingmentioning

confidence: 79%

The Changing German Voter

2022

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“…In social psychology, and more specifically the field of person perception, these two underlying dimensions are commonly described as "warmth" and "competence" (Fiske et al 2007). In political science, this dichotomy has only been introduced lately (e.g., Blumenberg & Blumenberg 2017;Ferreira Da Silva & Costa 2019). Furthermore, an interesting observation has been made by Caprara & Vecchione (2013) stating that politicians are not only typically evaluated along these two dimensions like others, but that politicians frequently score higher on both dimensions than nonpoliticians (Caprara & Vecchione 2013: 44).…”

Section: The Dimensionality Of Candidate Trait Evaluationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Politicians' Expressions of Anger and Leadership Evaluations

Masch¹

2020

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This book explores the impact of politicians’ expressions of anger on viewers. Electoral candidates may alter their emotional behaviour strategically during election campaigns as a means of gaining voters’ support. Hence, this study investigates empirically how expressions of anger affect leadership evaluations. An experiment was conducted to establish the impact of politicians’ expressions of emotions on viewers. This study focuses on politicians as a social group, as well as three politicians in particular: Chancellor Angela Merkel; Gregor Gysi, the former parliamentary leader of the Left; and Sigmar Gabriel, the former party leader of the Social Democrats. These three case studies are well-suited to testing the effects of expressions of emotion by political leaders with varying positions in the political system. Lena Masch is a lecturer at the Institute of Social Sciences at the Heinrich-Heine-Universität in Düsseldorf.

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“…To be sure, candidate effects on voting behaviour in German federal elections have been varied and election specific, with for example Kellerman (2007) finding that in German elections between 1990 and 2005 candidate evaluations were pivotal for the Social Democrats, but of far less importance for the Christian Democrats. Similarly, Blumenberg and Blumenberg (2018), in a comparative study of German regional elections in 2016, found that candidate evaluations played dominant roles in several of these elections, but far less of a role in others. This fits in with previous findings of Debus (2010), Shikano (2001), andKrewel, Schmidt, andWalter (2016), which have found that candidates have an impact on elections, but that this 'varies across levels, regions, and other contextual determinants' (Blumenberg and Blumenberg 2018, 360).…”

Section: The Decline Of the Spd: Structures Situations And Personalitiesmentioning

confidence: 94%

Rhapsody in Beige: The Impact of SPD Candidate Evaluations on Vote Choice in the 2009, 2013, and 2017 Federal Elections

Hansen¹,

Olsen²

2019

German Politics

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Previous research has shown that in addition to party identification chancellor candidate evaluations play an important role in determining vote choice in German federal elections. In this article, we evaluate the impact that such evaluations had on vote choice in 2009, 2013, and 2017 using the German Longitudinal Election Study. In contrast to a popular narrative that Chancellor Merkel was less of a factor in 2017 than she had been in the two previous elections where the Union parties ran especially personalised campaigns around Merkel, we find that the Kanzlerbonus (incumbency benefit) and Merkel's attractiveness to voters was strong in all three elections, especially among non-party identifiers. More importantly, we find that increasingly the Social Democrats had chancellor candidates unattractive to voters and perceived as bland across all of these elections, and demonstrate that this was a factor which significantly weakened their vote. Thus we conclude that beyond the structural weaknesses of the Social Democrats over the last three election cycles the lack of appeal of the party's chancellor candidates has played a significant role in the SPD's lack of electoral success.

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The Kretschmann Effect: Personalisation and the March 2016 Länder Elections

Cited by 7 publications

References 28 publications

The Changing German Voter

The Changing German Voter

Politicians' Expressions of Anger and Leadership Evaluations

Rhapsody in Beige: The Impact of SPD Candidate Evaluations on Vote Choice in the 2009, 2013, and 2017 Federal Elections

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