Nils Steiner

🚨New article out! 🚨 How attitudes toward binary ♀️♂️and non-heteronormative ⚧️🏳️‍🌈 gender issues relate to voting behavior 🗳️ 👉 doi.org/10.1017/S147...

So how did Lula come from behind to defeat Bolsonaro? In short, turnout. Bolsonaro's vote share barely moved. But Lula banked millions of votes from those who didn't vote in the first round & won eliminated candidates' votes. A remarkable mobilisation. Second round turnout is usually below first.

🧵 New paper in West European Politics with @miklossebok.bsky.social & Andrea Szabó! How did TISZA end 16 years of Orbán's rule? Using media and survey data, we argue that TISZA changed the terms of political conflict rather than competing on Fidesz's preferred issues. 👉 doi.org/10.1080/0140...

"The Republicans lead among only one group by likelihood of voting: those who said they were “not at all likely to vote." www.nytimes.com/2026/10/21/u...

📝 New paper in Party Politics (open access) with @lukashetzer.eurosky.social @janberz.bsky.social @wurthmann.bsky.social @sarahwagner.bsky.social 👇 journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/... When a mainstream party accommodates the radical right, do its potential coalition partners pay too? 🧵

Cool research note (says the handling editor)! “Don’t know” responses to left–right self-placement vary sharply by survey mode in the Eurobarometer. Broader lessons: (1) Be careful when comparing nonresponse across modes. (2) Making “don’t know” equally available and salient across modes is hard.

Looking for a dataset on the social media presence and visibility of German MPs? Stefan Wallaschek has you covered! Now open access at PVS/GPSQ link.springer.com/article/10.1...

📢New paper in @thejop.bsky.social on the reciprocal nature of citizens’ support for democratic transgressions. Together with Hannah Werner & @annakern.bsky.social , we show that when confronted with violations by political opponents, citizens’ support for transgressions by their own side doubles!

New research note out with Martin Haselmayer in @ejprjournal.bsky.social 🎉 When do parties invoke social groups to attack their rivals? 👇 doi.org/10.1017/S147...

Ich freue mich, dass mein Buch "Demokratische Regierungssysteme" jetzt auch als Sonderausgabe für die Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung @bpb.de vorliegt. Bald bestellbar über: www.bpb.de/shop/

Inheritance taxation is unpopular, even amongst people who are unlikely to ever have to pay it. Why? In four different studies - experiment! panels! behaviour! - @cvalebeek.bsky.social and I show political trust is a strong predictor for support for the tax. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Another 'wow the Eurozone crisis is a long time ago'-moment - Greek (seasonally adjusted) youth unemployment has now fallen below EU average, something that would have seemed absurd 10 years ago:

Why do green parties struggle electorally despite widespread support for climate action? My new (first 😱) paper explores why green parties remain uniquely challenged in economic crisis & that the mechanism is not only about sociotropic concerns, but also voters’ pocketbooks 🧵 doi.org/10.1017/S147...

How did the war in Ukraine and Trump's return to office influence foreign policy attitudes in Germany? Find out now in a new open access article by Matthias Mader and Harald Schoen: link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Another fine contribution to the AK Wahlen special issue on the 2025 German election: Schuster et al. examine the effects of Merz’s pre-election firewall breach. Neat features: The Munich and Salzburg teams joined forces after submitting similar proposals and preregistered their analyses. 👇

Two neat findings in Christopher Claassen’s new POQ paper: 1️⃣ Democratic support predicts stronger resistance to antidemocratic candidates, even under partisan cross-pressure. 2️⃣ The Claassen et al. liberal democracy scale is the most consistent moderator. doi.org/10.1093/poq/...

Here is a link to the paper that @stano.bsky.social posted about yesterday. BLUF: anti-feminist attitudes have long predicted Republican pres voting, but these attitudes are only recently more likely to be found among unmarried men without college degrees. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

For my new research unit Politics of Democracy at the Berlin Social Science Center @wzb.bsky.social, we have 3 open research positions. 2 postdocs: 4 + 2 years (100%) 1 doc: 2 years (75%) Starting date: 1 March 2027 (negotiable) Application deadline: 1 November

Postdoc position within my group 3 years (100% TVl-13): stellen.uni-muenster.de/jobposting/2... ⏱️ 06.11.2026 If you have questions: get in touch!

In another great contribution to the AK Wahlen special issue on the 2025 German election, @denis-cohen.bsky.social and colleagues use Bayesian finite mixture models to study mainstream-to-challenger defection. Their findings highlight the underappreciated role of performance evaluations. 👇

The Swiss People’s Party SVP is one of the oldest and electorally strongest radical-right parties in the world. But: electoral popularity ≠ policy popularity Voters keep supporting the SVP in elections, but only 2 out of 12 popular initiatives launched by the SVP have passed Data: Swissvotes

⏳ Why are voters out of step with parties on immigration and redistribution? Hironao Yoda and Serika Atsumi study 16 Western European countries: newer cohorts link the two issues as parties do — older ones don't, so the gap should narrow with generational turnover. 🔗 doi.org/10.1080/0140...

Our colleague and friend Philipp Köker has left us and i can't begin to order my thoughts. I hope I can express to his family the feeling of loss we can't beginn to understand, but attempt to share. rundblick-niedersachsen.de/politikwisse...

We are hiring at LMU Munich: two PhD positions and one postdoc on democracy, political psychology and computational social science. Start: January 2027 or as soon as possible. We review applications on a rolling basis until October 20. Details below. Reposts very welcome! 1/7

Interesting new paper in @wepsocial.bsky.social by Yoda&Atsumi showing that "the positive association between pro-redistribution and pro-immigration attitudes is weaker among earlier cohorts." In other words: the number of left-authoritarian voters decreases across generations.

1/ Happy to see @kaitlin-alper.bsky.social, myself, & Andreas Jozwiak's paper out @ejprjournal.bsky.social It's well-known that, on average, women support redistribution more than men. We find that the gender gap is conditional on household income & inequality within couples. tinyurl.com/3nrn53ej

Yes. here you go. Trump’s approval is significantly below where it was in 2018

Trump's net approval has now sunk to -27, with absolutely no sign of the trend reversing. What will it look like in two years as we approach the next presidential election? Data as ever via @gelliottmorris.com @fiftyplusone.news

📣 We're hiring! Looking for a PhD position? Join our team in Berlin! Work with @heikekluever.bsky.social and @markuskollberg.bsky.social in #STATEWORK at Humboldt University and join our @dynamics.bsky.social PhD programme Great people, great project, great city! 🗓️ Deadline: 13 October 2026

Ähnliche Muster auch sich in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. Ein höherer AfD-Stimmenanteil korreliert stark mit Ländlichkeit und peripherer Lage. In Gemeinden mit geringerem Bevölkerungsverlust, höherer Beschäftigungsquote Älterer und höherem Einkommensteueraufkommen pro Kopf ist die AfD eher schwächer.

Die AfD hat bei den Landtagswahlen 2026 ihre Ergebnisse gegenüber dem jeweiligen Landesergebnis bei der Bundestagswahl 2025 gar nicht mal so stark steigern können (wie man vielleicht denken könnte, wenn man immer nur den Vergleich zur vorherigen Landtagswahl sieht).

The gender gap among young voters in Berlin’s state election: 51% of women under 25 voted for the Left Party, according to exit polls.

MECKLENBURG-VORPOMMERN: Wahlverhalten nach Alter — Hochrechnung Infratest dimap/ARD, 18:57 Uhr SPD | AfD | CDU | LINKE | GRÜNE 16-24: 22 | 34 | 2 | 24 | 6 25-34: 24 | 31 | 3 | 19 | 10 35-44: 28 | 45 | 3 | 7 | 7 45-59: 29 | 46 | 5 | 4 | 6 60-69: 38 | 40 | 6 | 4 | 4 70+: 52 | 25 | 8 | 5 | 4 #ltwmv

We are delighted (and soooooo happy) that the DFG will fund the first four years of our Research Unit “𝗕𝗲𝘆𝗼𝗻𝗱 𝗖𝗿𝗮𝘇𝘆: 𝗜𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗴𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗕𝗲𝗻𝗲𝗳𝗶𝘁𝘀 𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗼 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗔𝗻𝗮𝗹𝘆𝘀𝗶𝘀 𝗼𝗳 𝗖𝗼𝗻𝘀𝗽𝗶𝗿𝗮𝗰𝘆 𝗕𝗲𝗹𝗶𝗲𝗳𝘀”. We will seek 8 Ph.D. candidates and a postdoctoral coordinator to start in Spring 2027.

Geo-coded electoral data offers immense potential for understanding democratic processes. @dielea.bsky.social, Stefan Jünger, and I will build a research data infrastructure to support the global research community using such data with our DFG-funded project "Electoral Spaces". We are hiring!

🧵 Just accepted @thejop.bsky.social, with @tswalve.bsky.social "What's in a name? Name recognition, place-based identities, and candidate success" Voters prefer local candidates. But how do they know who's local? Often simply from the name on the ballot👇 www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...

This Sunday, Die Linke could become Berlin’s strongest party for the first time. Importantly, its success in urban centers reflects a broader sociostructural transformation: from a party rooted in the support of production workers to one drawing disproportionate support from the new middle class.

The German Local Manifesto Project (GLMP) is now online! 🇩🇪 GLMP provides a systematically documented & reproducible corpus of local manifestos & related political programmes from municipalities across Germany. Browse & download the data: localmanifestoproject.de @christinajuen.bsky.social