Arndt Leininger @aleininger.bsky.social · 05/10/2026Government status matters, though: the same state party is less supportive in manifestos written in government than in opposition. This is clearest for the CDU and SPD, the parties that alternate in office most, though subsample estimates are noisier. 9/ 100
Arndt Leininger @aleininger.bsky.social · 05/10/2026Challenger parties (those that have not yet governed) support direct democracy much more than mainstream parties. But looking within parties over time, they don't drop the issue after entering government for the first time. 8/ 100
Arndt Leininger @aleininger.bsky.social · 05/10/2026Using data on continuous party positions on economic and cultural left-right dimensions (1990–2017) reveals that the cultural dimension is more strongly associated with support than the economic one. Support is higher at both cultural ends than in the middle. 7/ 100
Arndt Leininger @aleininger.bsky.social · 05/10/2026Regression analyses show that left-of-center manifestos contain significantly more supporting sentences than those of the centrist parties. Right-of-center parties also exceed the center, but by a smaller margin. Populism adds support beyond what left-right positioning predicts. 6/ 100
Arndt Leininger @aleininger.bsky.social · 05/10/2026Who talks about it favorably? The left-of-center Greens and Die Linke/PDS, but also the populist radical right AfD, in most of their manifestos. The liberal FDP and the social-democratic SPD only in about half. And the Christian Democratic CDU and CSU rarely. 5/ 100
Arndt Leininger @aleininger.bsky.social · 05/10/2026First finding: when parties mention direct democracy, they are almost always in favor. About 75% of sentences are supportive; fewer than 5% are opposed. Skeptical parties don't argue against it. They stay silent, as salience theory predicts. Over time, the topic gains traction. 4/ 100
Arndt Leininger @aleininger.bsky.social · 05/10/2026Data: 701 manifestos of German parties from national and state elections, 1975–2017. A custom dictionary finds 2,209 sentences on direct democracy. An LLM codes each as supporting, opposing, or neutral, validated against three human coders. 3/ 100
Arndt Leininger @aleininger.bsky.social · 05/10/2026New in @govandopp.bsky.social (open access) "Explaining the Positions of Political Parties Towards Direct Democracy" Citizens in many democracies want more direct democracy, but reforms lag behind. Why? I look at the actors who would have to share power: parties. 🧵 www.cambridge.org/core/journal... 1154
Arndt Leininger @aleininger.bsky.social · 15/09/2026Who reacts most? Rural respondents and those born near where they live, i.e., those with stronger ties to place. 120
Arndt Leininger @aleininger.bsky.social · 15/09/2026A conjoint experiment mirroring the Bundestag ballot (name, party, occupation, residence) shows that candidates with foreign-sounding or other-region surnames are less likely to be chosen than those with local or generic names. The foreign-name penalty exceeds the white- vs. blue-collar gap. 121
Arndt Leininger @aleininger.bsky.social · 15/09/2026Study 2: a survey in six German regions. Can people actually spot local names? Yes. The more concentrated a surname is in their region, the more respondents classify it as local. 121
Arndt Leininger @aleininger.bsky.social · 15/09/2026And it's mostly a rural phenomenon: surname effects are pronounced in rural constituencies and essentially absent in cities. 130
Arndt Leininger @aleininger.bsky.social · 15/09/2026Result: local names win votes. With year, party & constituency fixed effects, a local name is worth about 1 pp of the candidate vote, more than being born in the constituency and close to the bonus of a doctorate. Robust to controls for birthplace, residence, and name frequency. 130
Arndt Leininger @aleininger.bsky.social · 15/09/2026Study 1: We mapped the surnames of 5,757 constituency candidates in Bundestag elections 2005–2021 using a phone-book database (GeoGen) and measured how concentrated each name is around the candidate's constituency. Süßmair in Augsburg: very local. Schmidt: everywhere. 111
Arndt Leininger @aleininger.bsky.social · 08/09/2026Aufregend; Nachdem ich schon mehrfach mit den Daten gearbeitet habe, gehe ich nun erstmals selbst als Datenpunkt in die repräsentative Wahlstatistik ein. 0120
Arndt Leininger @aleininger.bsky.social · 01/04/2026Somehow I always take up new positions on April Fool's Day but this is no joke: as of today I am professor of political science, especially methods @uni-hamburg.de. Obviously I'm stoked to have landed a permanent position and look forward to working w/ great new colleagues @politikuhh.bsky.social 171133
Arndt Leininger @aleininger.bsky.social · 30/03/2026Ich kann mich nicht erinnern wann zuletzt ein einziger Wal so viel Aufmerksamkeit auf sich gezogen hat. Fühle mit allen Walforscher:innen, die jetzt diesen Einzelfall erklären müssen. 071
Arndt Leininger @aleininger.bsky.social · 29/03/2026Kürzere Laufzeit als die Ampel... aber die hat auch mehr als die halbe Distanz geschafft. 050
Arndt Leininger @aleininger.bsky.social · 18/11/2025Talk about critical infrastructure and overreliance on a single service provider. I can't access a host of websites, nor download academic articles, etc., because #Cloudflare has technical issues. 070
Arndt Leininger @aleininger.bsky.social · 25/10/2025Die, die am häufigsten im Stadtbild unterwegs sind, stimmen am wenigsten zu. 🤷 www.zdfheute.de/politik/deut... 072
Arndt Leininger @aleininger.bsky.social · 08/05/2025In line with our theory, we find that incumbents and high-profile party members are punished more by voters. They lose more votes compared to lower-ranking party members. 6/ 030
Arndt Leininger @aleininger.bsky.social · 08/05/2025We estimate the effect of the scandal, a loss of 4 percentage points to the party, through a difference-in-differences design—by differentiating trends in pre-scandal postal and post-scandal urn voting. 3/ 130
Arndt Leininger @aleininger.bsky.social · 08/05/2025New 📰: In "Can Individual MPs Damage Their Party’s Brand? Quasi-Experimental Evidence from a Public Procurement Corruption Scandal" out in @thejop.bsky.social @lukrudolph.bsky.social and I show that the "mask affair" cost the CDU 4%-points in elections. www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/... 1/ 1269
Arndt Leininger @aleininger.bsky.social · 02/05/2025Of course, some constituency results ended up different than expected but a citizen forecast also gives you pretty accurate expectations of which races will be close: 110
Arndt Leininger @aleininger.bsky.social · 02/05/2025We had hoped to get this out before the 2025 election but, well, the government broke before that. Here are a few insights from the article: 1. Forecast worked relatively well overall and, as expected, groups forecasts much accurately than individual respondents. 110
Arndt Leininger @aleininger.bsky.social · 02/05/2025New #openaccess "Citizen forecasting in a mixed electoral system: The 2021 German federal election as a test case" (with Andreas Murr, @lstoetze.bsky.social and @markkayser.bsky.social) in International Journal of Forecasting. doi.org/10.1016/j.ij... 1/ 1114
Arndt Leininger @aleininger.bsky.social · 29/04/2025Another great publication by @ttichelbaecker.bsky.social and his first with TU Chemnitz affiliation: "Does political violence undermine descriptive representation? The case of women in politics" out in EJPR. #openaccess Thanks for helping us put Chemnitz on the map, Thomas! doi.org/10.1111/1475... 0142
Arndt Leininger @aleininger.bsky.social · 29/04/2025Very happy and proud to see @felixgruenewald.bsky.social 's paper "‘Seen one, seen ‘em all’: political outgroup homogeneity and negative affect" in print @wepsocial.bsky.social. One of the first outputs of our @dfg.de funded project on polarization. Check it out, it's #openaccess 0195
Arndt Leininger @aleininger.bsky.social · 28/03/2025After 2 terms of office, I am stepping down as spokesperson for the Methods Section of the @dvpw.bsky.social. Many thanks to my co-speakers @gessler.bsky.social and @denis-cohen.bsky.social for the great collaboration and the lovely gift. 3322
Arndt Leininger @aleininger.bsky.social · 24/02/2025Der Aufstieg der Linken fasziniert mich. Ich hatte da so eine Vermutung und tatsächlich ist es so: Die Linke gewinnt dort wo die Grünen verlieren. Der Zusammenhang ist bemerkenswert, der Zusammenhang zu Gewinnen/Verlusten der SPD andersrum und zu denen der CDU nicht vorhanden. 912734
Arndt Leininger @aleininger.bsky.social · 24/02/2025What we see is not first-time voters being more left-wing than in 2021. 49% of youths voting for SPD/Greens/Linke in 2025 vs 46% in 2021. What we see is that most progressive youths are choosing Linke instead of SPD and Greens now. 131
Arndt Leininger @aleininger.bsky.social · 24/02/2025Viele teilen Karten, die altbekanntes zeigen: die AfD ist die Partei des Ostens. Viel bemerkenswerter erscheint mir: Die Linke ist auf dem Weg, zu einer gesamtdeutschen Partei zu werden. (Links 2021, rechts 2025) 190
Arndt Leininger @aleininger.bsky.social · 24/02/2025Erstmal ☕ nach der Wahlnacht. Zum Glück habe ich noch alle Tassen im Schrank. 0110
Arndt Leininger @aleininger.bsky.social · 08/02/2025Auch der @tagesspiegel.de berichtet über die Studie von @krausewe.bsky.social und @christinagahn.bsky.social und vergisst, die beiden zu erwähnen. Liest sich als hätte @felixkiefer.bsky.social nicht die Studie, sondern nur den SZ-Artikel gelesen. Studie ist nicht veröffentlicht, ein Working paper. 270
Arndt Leininger @aleininger.bsky.social · 30/01/2025Tausende Demonstrierende vor dem "Haus des Politikwechsels". Was damit gemeint ist, weiß man nun. 110417
Arndt Leininger @aleininger.bsky.social · 20/12/2024🚨 Job alert: I have an opening for a researcher position (65% FTE, 2 years) in a project on "Elite Affective Polarization in Israel and Germany" funded by the German Israeli Foundation and conducted jointly w/ @liorsheffer.bsky.social. 🗓️ 17/01/2021 www.tu-chemnitz.de/verwaltung/p... 13437