Die politische Urteilsbildung der Wählerschaft im Vorfeld der Bundestagswahl 2017. Eine empirische Analyse in der Tradition von „The People’s Choice“

Abstract

Modern election research starts with the study “The People’s Choice” by Paul F. Lazarsfeld, Bernard Berelson and Hazel Gaudet (1944). Almost 75 years after the publication of this canonical work, a study was carried out on the occasion of the 2017 German federal elections, which took “The People’s Choice” as a model in many different respects. For instance, a multi-wave panel survey was conducted during the election campaign. Respondents who changed their voting intentions between two panel waves were again asked open-ended questions about the reasons behind this change. And finally in the course of data analysis, an attempt was made to transfer the types of change and the campaign effects differentiated by Lazarsfeld et al. to the 2017 federal elections in Germany. As a result, it can be seen that reinforcing a long-standing voting intention is still the most important election campaign effect today. In contrast, it is still rather rare that a voting intention is changed as a result of the election campaign.