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AbstractUsing national survey panel data collected in Germany during the 1990 Bundestag election campaign, we develop a model to assess the effect of the campaign on individual votes and the election outcome.We find that the dominant effects of the campaign on German voters, as in the Lazarsfeld et. al. studies from the 1940s and in more recent U.S. research, were the "reinforcement" of earlier preferences and the "activation" of latent vote dispositions based on fundamental individual attitudes such as party affiliation and left-right ideology.At the same time, the analyses shows that the number of campaign converts, those who vote against their dispositions and prior preferences, was approximately 13% of the electorate. The vote division among these individuals was overwhelmingly progovernment, suggesting that the 1990 German campaign altered a sufficient number of votes to turn what was an even contest, based on the electorate's initial political dispositions, into a solid government coalition victory.The results are discussed in terms of their theoretical as well as normative implications.
This article analyses candidates' strategies in leadership debates and voters' responses to those strategies. Based on an examination of German election campaign debates since 1972, we specify a number of different debating strategies available to the candidates. The strategic choices made by each party leader are then identified through content analysis. Finally, employing aggregate-level data, regression models are used to determine whether or not the debaters' strategies influenced voters' evaluations of who won and who lost each encounter. We report three major findings: (I) 'positive', non-attacking debating styles generate the most favourable public evaluations; (2) voters are most attentive to candidates' discussions of the parties' and government's record rather than their discussions of individual personalities; and (3), in some cases, these effects exceed those of party identification.
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