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Dominanz der Ökonomie: Entscheidet die Wirtschaftslage Wahlen
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... To analyze the discussed hypotheses empirically, we examine the 2009 federal parliamentary elections, in Germany, and analyzes how voters' perception of the national and the regional economy as well as regional unemployment affected voting behavior. The 2009 German national elections are a suitable case because the election took place in the midst of the global financial and economic crisis, which made the economy a highly salient issue (Beckmann, Trein, and Walter 2011, Zohlnhöfer 2011, Saalfeld 2011, Goerres and Walter 2016. In 2009, the national government -a "grand coalition" of the Christian democrats (CDU) and the social democrats (SPD) -argued that the crisis originated elsewhere in an effort to downplay its own responsibility for the crisis. ...
... Economically, the situation was unusual because the elections took place in the midst of the global financial and economic crisis. However, while there is agreement that the economy was a salient issue in the 2009 federal elections (Zohlnhöfer 2011, Saalfeld 2011, Beckmann, Trein, and Walter 2011, Goerres and Walter 2016, the direction and importance of economic voting in these elections has been disputed. Rattinger and Steinbrecher (2011) find an influence of economic perceptions on vote intentions, but emphasize the strong role of party identification. ...
... Taken together, the results of our analyses demonstrate that the economy affected vote choice in the 2009 German federal elections. Thus, the results support the findings of the research that pointed to the impact of the elections on the economy on previous instances(Beckmann, Trein, and Walter 2011, Debus, Stegmaier, andTosun 2014). Nevertheless, the results presented in this paper add to our understanding of the economic vote in the national elections of 2009 as they consider the impact of the economic context -namely the change of the unemployment rate the constituency level -in addition to voters' personal assessment of the economy. ...
This paper analyzes the connection between economic context, voters' individual assessment of the economy, and party identification, taking the German national elections of 2009 as an example. Based on the results of multinomial and multilevel regression models, we show that partisanship moderates how the economy affects the vote. In case of increasing unemployment in the constituency, voters are less likely to vote for the social democrats instead of the CDU and the opposition. This effect is particularly strong amongst voters who report that they identify with the social democrats. Regarding the effect of voters' assessment of the national economy, the results are different. In this case, a better evaluation of the regional economy increases the probability to vote for right parties – notably amongst voters without partisanship. These findings suggest that we should not overestimate the moderating effect of partisanship on the economy's impact on voting behavior. What is more, this analysis implies that research on economic voting should always account for contextual factors and voters' personal 2 assessment of the economy together as these measures reveal different dimensions of economic voting.
... Therefore, this policy context is an interesting case that allows us to assess whether the local variation of these policies influence the aggregate effects of political parties' electoral fortune given that elections to the German national parliament occurred in September 2009, only nine months after STW rates began to increase sharply (Sacchi et al., 2011, 31). Nevertheless, they agree that the economy was a salient issue at the time (Beckmann et al., 2011;Goerres and Walter, 2016;Trein et al. 2017). ...
In this article, we examine how labour market policy interventions, notably short-time work (STW), affect voting behaviour in times of electoral downturn. We use the 2009 German general elections as an example. This is a particularly interesting case because the grand coalition of Christian democrats (CDU/CSU) and social democrats (SPD) was up for re-election against the backdrop of a major recession following the 2007/08 financial crisis and extensively used STW policies to counteract rising unemployment. Interestingly, STW policy and unemployment vary considerably between regions. We exploit this variance to create a unique dataset that combines regional information on STW policy and unemployment in 299 German electoral constituencies with individual data from the post-election survey. Our results show that especially the SPD profited from high STW rates at constituency level on election day, but this policy was insufficient to preclude the major losses social democrats suffered during the election. More generally, our results indicate that classic labour market policy can generate electoral support for social democratic parties, even as a "junior partner" in a grand coalition. Nevertheless, it remains unclear whether such support is sufficient for electoral victories.
Sitzung des Haupt- und Finanzausschusses in einer südhessischen Kleinstadt: Die Mitglieder des Gremiums stimmen der europaweiten Ausschreibung der Architekturleistung der Rathaussanierung zu. Anschließend diskutieren die Kommunalpolitiker die Richtlinien zum Förderprogramm „Lokale Ökonomie“, das mit Mitteln des Europäischen Fonds für regionale Entwicklung ausgestattet ist.
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