April Leininger
Biographic Data
| ID | 751016 |
|---|---|
| NAME | April Leininger |
| GIVEN NAMES | April |
| FAMILY NAME | Leininger |
| SIGNATURE | LEININGER A |
| AFFILIATIONS | Chemnitz University of Technology |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-2491-9057 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 27 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 156 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 27 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2015 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
What's in a name? Name recognition, place-based identities, and candidate success
Wahlgeografie
In der Stadt-Land-Debatte werden politische Raumunterschiede häufig auf einen Gegensatz zwischen Metropolen mit über einer Million Einwohner:innen und kleinen Gemeinden mit nur niedrigen vierstelligen Bevölkerungszahlen reduziert.Diese bilden jedoch nur einen kleinen Ausschnitt der Lebensrealitäten der Bevölkerung ab.Ein erheblicher Teil der Bevölkerung lebt in Klein-und Mittelstädten mit bis zu 100.000Einwohner:innen.Hier setzt Ansgar Hudde, Soz…
Unequal Turnout Among the Newly Enfranchised
Unequal political participation increasingly challenges democracies. The turnout gap is particularly large among younger voters, with severe implications for future developments of democratic representation, legitimacy, and quality. This article focuses on the role of political efficacy beliefs in explaining unequal turnout among newly enfranchised citizens. We argue that internal political efficacy beliefs are particularly important for turnout …
Unequal Participation Among Youth and Immigrants
This thematic issue covers the political participation of youth and immigrants in contemporary democracies. The articles in this issue advance knowledge in youth studies, migration studies, and political behavior, theoretically and empirically. They do so by proposing innovative perspectives on voter turnout, political efficacy, protest behavior, representation preferences, and intersectional dynamics among young and immigrant-origin voters. Util…
Can Individual MPs Damage Their Party’s Brand? Quasi-Experimental Evidence from a Public Procurement Corruption Scandal
Voters’ Expectations in Constituency Elections without Local Polls
How do voters form accurate expectations about the strength of political candidates in constituency elections if there are no reliable constituency polls available? We argue that voters can use national election polls and past election results to increase the accuracy of their expectations. A survey experiment during the German federal election of 2021 confirms that the provision of national election polls and past results increases the accuracy …
Strategic Alignment in Times of Crisis
Natural disasters are likely to increase in the near future. How does the emergence of such events influence voting behavior? While the literature has focused on the electoral repercussions after disaster has already struck, we investigate whether imminent disaster influences vote choice. We study the effect of the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic on electoral choice in a setting that allows for causal identification: the local elections in Germany…
Coming of voting age. Evidence from a natural experiment on the effects of electoral eligibility
In recent years, several jurisdictions have lowered the voting age, with many more discussing it. Sceptics question whether young people are ready to vote, while supporters argue that allowing them to vote would increase their specific engagement with politics. To test the latter argument, we use a series of register-based surveys of over 10,000 German adolescents. Knowing the exact birthdates of our respondents, we estimate the causal effect of …
Cleavage politics, polarisation and participation in Western Europe
Polarisation over cultural issues and the emergence of radical, often populist, challenger parties indicate a fundamental restructuring of political conflict in Western Europe. The emerging divide crosscuts and, in part, reshapes older cleavages. This special issue introduction highlights how the transformation of cleavage structures relates to the dynamics of polarisation and political participation. The contributions to the special issue innova…
Rechtspopulismus
Temporary Disenfranchisement
How does losing one's right to vote again after having been eligible to vote before affect political fundamentals such as political efficacy? We draw attention to the hitherto neglected phenomenon "temporary disenfranchisement," which, for instance, occurs regularly in states that extended the franchise to underage citizens in some but not all elections. If an election with voting age 16 is closely followed by an election with voting age 18, unde…
Tagungsbericht „24 h of Political Psychology“ – Jahrestagung 2022 des German Political Psychology Network
Article Tagungsbericht „24 h of Political Psychology“ – Jahrestagung 2022 des German Political Psychology Network was published on June 1, 2022 in the journal Forschungsjournal Soziale Bewegungen (volume 35, issue 2)
Electoral participation, political disaffection, and the rise of the populist radical right
Does the populist radical right benefit from increased electoral mobilization? Integrating theories of political grievances with accounts of party competition in Western Europe, we contend that the populist right gains advantage from increased electoral mobilization, but that this effect is conditional on political disaffection. We draw on a novel panel dataset (2009–2019) of more than 10,000 German municipalities and city districts to study the …
Lowering the Quality of Democracy by Lowering the Voting Age? Comparing the Impact of School, Classmates, and Parents on 15- to 18-Year-Olds’ Political Interest and Turnout
Some scholars argue that lowering the voting age from 21 to 18 years led to declining turnout rates and increasing political inequality. Individuals in this age bracket are often no longer in school, frequently moved out from their parental home and are thus no longer within reach of the major political socialisation agents. We empirically test some of these claims and their effects on youngsters’ political interest and turnout on a behavioural l…
A Länder-Based Forecast of the 2021 German Bundestag Election
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Wählen in der Pandemie
Die Herausforderungen durch das Coronavirus erfassen alle Lebensbereiche, nicht zuletzt die Politik im "Superwahljahr" 2021. Anders als z. B. Sportveranstaltungen können Wahlen jedoch nicht einfach abgesagt, verschoben oder ohne Zuschauer:innen durchgeführt werden. Während in Israel während des Ausbruchs der Epidemie Anfang März spezielle Wahllokale mit medizinischem Personal in Schutzkleidung für unter Quarantäne stehende Wähler:innen eingericht…
Do Populist Parties Increase Voter Turnout? Evidence From Over 40 Years of Electoral History in 31 European Democracies
While some consider populist parties to be a threat to liberal democracy, others have argued that populist parties may positively affect the quality of democracy by increasing political participation of citizens. This supposition, however, has hitherto not been subjected to rigorous empirical tests. The voter turnout literature, moreover, has primarily focused on stable institutional and party system characteristics – ignoring more dynamic determ…
Coattails and spillover-effects
Concurrent elections are widely used to increase turnout. We theorize and show empirically how concurrency affects electoral outcomes. First, concurrency increases turnout and thereby the participation of peripheral voters. Second, in combined elections, one electoral arena affects the other. In our case of majoritarian executive elections concurrent to proportional representation (PR) legislative elections, the centripetal tendency of majoritari…
The impact of group identity on coalition formation
Bargaining and coalition building are a central part of modern politics. We argue that majoritarian bargaining is important for the formation of coalitions and that group-identity preferences have an impact on partner selection. We tested the effect of gender, race, and ideological distance in a majority-rule bargaining experiment and found that ideological distance significantly affected the likelihood and amount offered to potential partners. W…
Instrumental or procedural democrats? The evolution of procedural preferences after democratization
This paper addresses instrumentalist attitudes to democracy – attitudes according to which democracy is not valued for itself, but accepted only as a means to specific policy goals. Pippa Norris has argued that in the process of democratic consolidation, such instrumentalist conceptions of democracy are replaced with proceduralist ones, leading to an enlightened understanding of democracy. We use the unique case of German reunification to show th…
Economic Voting in Direct Democracy
Referendums provide citizens with more control over policy. At the same time, they often entail choices over highly complex policies and are politicised along partisan lines, suggesting that partisan rather than policy considerations will guide voters’ choices. I look to the 2016 Italian constitutional referendum, which was particularly complex and polarised, as an opportunity to test for mechanisms of government accountability in a referendum. U…
How to Increase Turnout in Low-Salience Elections
Voter turnout in second-order elections is on a dramatic decline in many modern democracies. This article investigates how electoral participation can be substantially increased by holding multiple of these less important elections simultaneously. Leading to a relative decrease in voting costs, concurrent elections theoretically have economies of scale to the individual voter and thus should see turnout levels larger than those obtained in any st…
A Länder-based Forecast of the 2017 German Bundestag Election
When elections are distant, polls are poor predictors. Too few voters are paying attention and too much can change before election day. Structural models can establish baseline expectations but suffer from high uncertainty and underspecification imposed by small samples. We present an early forecast of the 2017 Bundestag election results for individual parties that leverages economic and political data as well as state parliament (Landtag) \nelec…
How representative are referendums? Evidence from 20 years of Swiss referendums
A Predictive Test of Voters' Economic Benchmarking
Do voters judge their national economy relative to economic performance abroad? In 2013 we took advantage of the German Bundestag election to test this hypothesis predictively. Nearly two months prior to the election, we published an election forecast relying on a theory-driven empirical model of election outcomes that draws on previous election outcomes; characteristics of the government and of voters; and, most originally, the relative economic…
Do Populist Parties Increase Voter Turnout? Evidence From Over 40 Years of Electoral History in 31 European Democracies
While some consider populist parties to be a threat to liberal democracy, others have argued that populist parties may positively affect the quality of democracy by increasing political participation of citizens. This supposition, however, has hitherto not been subjected to rigorous empirical tests. The voter turnout literature, moreover, has primarily focused on stable institutional and party system characteristics – ignoring more dynamic determ…
Cleavage politics, polarisation and participation in Western Europe
Polarisation over cultural issues and the emergence of radical, often populist, challenger parties indicate a fundamental restructuring of political conflict in Western Europe. The emerging divide crosscuts and, in part, reshapes older cleavages. This special issue introduction highlights how the transformation of cleavage structures relates to the dynamics of polarisation and political participation. The contributions to the special issue innova…
Electoral participation, political disaffection, and the rise of the populist radical right
Does the populist radical right benefit from increased electoral mobilization? Integrating theories of political grievances with accounts of party competition in Western Europe, we contend that the populist right gains advantage from increased electoral mobilization, but that this effect is conditional on political disaffection. We draw on a novel panel dataset (2009–2019) of more than 10,000 German municipalities and city districts to study the …
How to Increase Turnout in Low-Salience Elections
Voter turnout in second-order elections is on a dramatic decline in many modern democracies. This article investigates how electoral participation can be substantially increased by holding multiple of these less important elections simultaneously. Leading to a relative decrease in voting costs, concurrent elections theoretically have economies of scale to the individual voter and thus should see turnout levels larger than those obtained in any st…
A Predictive Test of Voters' Economic Benchmarking
Do voters judge their national economy relative to economic performance abroad? In 2013 we took advantage of the German Bundestag election to test this hypothesis predictively. Nearly two months prior to the election, we published an election forecast relying on a theory-driven empirical model of election outcomes that draws on previous election outcomes; characteristics of the government and of voters; and, most originally, the relative economic…
Vintage errors
Economic performance is a key component of most election forecasts. When fitting models, however, most forecasters unwittingly assume that the actual state of the economy, a state best estimated by the multiple periodic revisions to official macroeconomic statistics, drives voter behavior. The difference in macroeconomic estimates between revised and original data vintages can be substantial, commonly over 100% (two-fold) for economic growth esti…
Lowering the Quality of Democracy by Lowering the Voting Age? Comparing the Impact of School, Classmates, and Parents on 15- to 18-Year-Olds’ Political Interest and Turnout
Some scholars argue that lowering the voting age from 21 to 18 years led to declining turnout rates and increasing political inequality. Individuals in this age bracket are often no longer in school, frequently moved out from their parental home and are thus no longer within reach of the major political socialisation agents. We empirically test some of these claims and their effects on youngsters’ political interest and turnout on a behavioural l…
How representative are referendums? Evidence from 20 years of Swiss referendums
Coming of voting age. Evidence from a natural experiment on the effects of electoral eligibility
In recent years, several jurisdictions have lowered the voting age, with many more discussing it. Sceptics question whether young people are ready to vote, while supporters argue that allowing them to vote would increase their specific engagement with politics. To test the latter argument, we use a series of register-based surveys of over 10,000 German adolescents. Knowing the exact birthdates of our respondents, we estimate the causal effect of …
Temporary Disenfranchisement
How does losing one's right to vote again after having been eligible to vote before affect political fundamentals such as political efficacy? We draw attention to the hitherto neglected phenomenon "temporary disenfranchisement," which, for instance, occurs regularly in states that extended the franchise to underage citizens in some but not all elections. If an election with voting age 16 is closely followed by an election with voting age 18, unde…
Economic Voting in Direct Democracy
Referendums provide citizens with more control over policy. At the same time, they often entail choices over highly complex policies and are politicised along partisan lines, suggesting that partisan rather than policy considerations will guide voters’ choices. I look to the 2016 Italian constitutional referendum, which was particularly complex and polarised, as an opportunity to test for mechanisms of government accountability in a referendum. U…
Strategic Alignment in Times of Crisis
Natural disasters are likely to increase in the near future. How does the emergence of such events influence voting behavior? While the literature has focused on the electoral repercussions after disaster has already struck, we investigate whether imminent disaster influences vote choice. We study the effect of the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic on electoral choice in a setting that allows for causal identification: the local elections in Germany…
Instrumental or procedural democrats? The evolution of procedural preferences after democratization
This paper addresses instrumentalist attitudes to democracy – attitudes according to which democracy is not valued for itself, but accepted only as a means to specific policy goals. Pippa Norris has argued that in the process of democratic consolidation, such instrumentalist conceptions of democracy are replaced with proceduralist ones, leading to an enlightened understanding of democracy. We use the unique case of German reunification to show th…
Can Individual MPs Damage Their Party’s Brand? Quasi-Experimental Evidence from a Public Procurement Corruption Scandal
A Länder-Based Forecast of the 2021 German Bundestag Election
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Coattails and spillover-effects
Concurrent elections are widely used to increase turnout. We theorize and show empirically how concurrency affects electoral outcomes. First, concurrency increases turnout and thereby the participation of peripheral voters. Second, in combined elections, one electoral arena affects the other. In our case of majoritarian executive elections concurrent to proportional representation (PR) legislative elections, the centripetal tendency of majoritari…
Unequal Turnout Among the Newly Enfranchised
Unequal political participation increasingly challenges democracies. The turnout gap is particularly large among younger voters, with severe implications for future developments of democratic representation, legitimacy, and quality. This article focuses on the role of political efficacy beliefs in explaining unequal turnout among newly enfranchised citizens. We argue that internal political efficacy beliefs are particularly important for turnout …
Voters’ Expectations in Constituency Elections without Local Polls
How do voters form accurate expectations about the strength of political candidates in constituency elections if there are no reliable constituency polls available? We argue that voters can use national election polls and past election results to increase the accuracy of their expectations. A survey experiment during the German federal election of 2021 confirms that the provision of national election polls and past results increases the accuracy …
The impact of group identity on coalition formation
Bargaining and coalition building are a central part of modern politics. We argue that majoritarian bargaining is important for the formation of coalitions and that group-identity preferences have an impact on partner selection. We tested the effect of gender, race, and ideological distance in a majority-rule bargaining experiment and found that ideological distance significantly affected the likelihood and amount offered to potential partners. W…
A Länder-based Forecast of the 2017 German Bundestag Election
When elections are distant, polls are poor predictors. Too few voters are paying attention and too much can change before election day. Structural models can establish baseline expectations but suffer from high uncertainty and underspecification imposed by small samples. We present an early forecast of the 2017 Bundestag election results for individual parties that leverages economic and political data as well as state parliament (Landtag) \nelec…
Vintage errors
Economic performance is a key component of most election forecasts. When fitting models, however, most forecasters unwittingly assume that the actual state of the economy, a state best estimated by the multiple periodic revisions to official macroeconomic statistics, drives voter behavior. The difference in macroeconomic estimates between revised and original data vintages can be substantial, commonly over 100% (two-fold) for economic growth esti…
A Predictive Test of Voters' Economic Benchmarking
Do voters judge their national economy relative to economic performance abroad? In 2013 we took advantage of the German Bundestag election to test this hypothesis predictively. Nearly two months prior to the election, we published an election forecast relying on a theory-driven empirical model of election outcomes that draws on previous election outcomes; characteristics of the government and of voters; and, most originally, the relative economic…
Roy D'Andrade
A Länder-based Forecast of the 2017 German Bundestag Election
When elections are distant, polls are poor predictors. Too few voters are paying attention and too much can change before election day. Structural models can establish baseline expectations but suffer from high uncertainty and underspecification imposed by small samples. We present an early forecast of the 2017 Bundestag election results for individual parties that leverages economic and political data as well as state parliament (Landtag) \nelec…
How representative are referendums? Evidence from 20 years of Swiss referendums
How to Increase Turnout in Low-Salience Elections
Voter turnout in second-order elections is on a dramatic decline in many modern democracies. This article investigates how electoral participation can be substantially increased by holding multiple of these less important elections simultaneously. Leading to a relative decrease in voting costs, concurrent elections theoretically have economies of scale to the individual voter and thus should see turnout levels larger than those obtained in any st…
Instrumental or procedural democrats? The evolution of procedural preferences after democratization
This paper addresses instrumentalist attitudes to democracy – attitudes according to which democracy is not valued for itself, but accepted only as a means to specific policy goals. Pippa Norris has argued that in the process of democratic consolidation, such instrumentalist conceptions of democracy are replaced with proceduralist ones, leading to an enlightened understanding of democracy. We use the unique case of German reunification to show th…
Economic Voting in Direct Democracy
Referendums provide citizens with more control over policy. At the same time, they often entail choices over highly complex policies and are politicised along partisan lines, suggesting that partisan rather than policy considerations will guide voters’ choices. I look to the 2016 Italian constitutional referendum, which was particularly complex and polarised, as an opportunity to test for mechanisms of government accountability in a referendum. U…
The impact of group identity on coalition formation
Bargaining and coalition building are a central part of modern politics. We argue that majoritarian bargaining is important for the formation of coalitions and that group-identity preferences have an impact on partner selection. We tested the effect of gender, race, and ideological distance in a majority-rule bargaining experiment and found that ideological distance significantly affected the likelihood and amount offered to potential partners. W…
Wählen in der Pandemie
Die Herausforderungen durch das Coronavirus erfassen alle Lebensbereiche, nicht zuletzt die Politik im "Superwahljahr" 2021. Anders als z. B. Sportveranstaltungen können Wahlen jedoch nicht einfach abgesagt, verschoben oder ohne Zuschauer:innen durchgeführt werden. Während in Israel während des Ausbruchs der Epidemie Anfang März spezielle Wahllokale mit medizinischem Personal in Schutzkleidung für unter Quarantäne stehende Wähler:innen eingericht…
Do Populist Parties Increase Voter Turnout? Evidence From Over 40 Years of Electoral History in 31 European Democracies
While some consider populist parties to be a threat to liberal democracy, others have argued that populist parties may positively affect the quality of democracy by increasing political participation of citizens. This supposition, however, has hitherto not been subjected to rigorous empirical tests. The voter turnout literature, moreover, has primarily focused on stable institutional and party system characteristics – ignoring more dynamic determ…
Coattails and spillover-effects
Concurrent elections are widely used to increase turnout. We theorize and show empirically how concurrency affects electoral outcomes. First, concurrency increases turnout and thereby the participation of peripheral voters. Second, in combined elections, one electoral arena affects the other. In our case of majoritarian executive elections concurrent to proportional representation (PR) legislative elections, the centripetal tendency of majoritari…
Tagungsbericht „24 h of Political Psychology“ – Jahrestagung 2022 des German Political Psychology Network
Article Tagungsbericht „24 h of Political Psychology“ – Jahrestagung 2022 des German Political Psychology Network was published on June 1, 2022 in the journal Forschungsjournal Soziale Bewegungen (volume 35, issue 2)
Electoral participation, political disaffection, and the rise of the populist radical right
Does the populist radical right benefit from increased electoral mobilization? Integrating theories of political grievances with accounts of party competition in Western Europe, we contend that the populist right gains advantage from increased electoral mobilization, but that this effect is conditional on political disaffection. We draw on a novel panel dataset (2009–2019) of more than 10,000 German municipalities and city districts to study the …
Lowering the Quality of Democracy by Lowering the Voting Age? Comparing the Impact of School, Classmates, and Parents on 15- to 18-Year-Olds’ Political Interest and Turnout
Some scholars argue that lowering the voting age from 21 to 18 years led to declining turnout rates and increasing political inequality. Individuals in this age bracket are often no longer in school, frequently moved out from their parental home and are thus no longer within reach of the major political socialisation agents. We empirically test some of these claims and their effects on youngsters’ political interest and turnout on a behavioural l…
A Länder-Based Forecast of the 2021 German Bundestag Election
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Cleavage politics, polarisation and participation in Western Europe
Polarisation over cultural issues and the emergence of radical, often populist, challenger parties indicate a fundamental restructuring of political conflict in Western Europe. The emerging divide crosscuts and, in part, reshapes older cleavages. This special issue introduction highlights how the transformation of cleavage structures relates to the dynamics of polarisation and political participation. The contributions to the special issue innova…
Rechtspopulismus
Temporary Disenfranchisement
How does losing one's right to vote again after having been eligible to vote before affect political fundamentals such as political efficacy? We draw attention to the hitherto neglected phenomenon "temporary disenfranchisement," which, for instance, occurs regularly in states that extended the franchise to underage citizens in some but not all elections. If an election with voting age 16 is closely followed by an election with voting age 18, unde…
Voters’ Expectations in Constituency Elections without Local Polls
How do voters form accurate expectations about the strength of political candidates in constituency elections if there are no reliable constituency polls available? We argue that voters can use national election polls and past election results to increase the accuracy of their expectations. A survey experiment during the German federal election of 2021 confirms that the provision of national election polls and past results increases the accuracy …
Strategic Alignment in Times of Crisis
Natural disasters are likely to increase in the near future. How does the emergence of such events influence voting behavior? While the literature has focused on the electoral repercussions after disaster has already struck, we investigate whether imminent disaster influences vote choice. We study the effect of the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic on electoral choice in a setting that allows for causal identification: the local elections in Germany…
Coming of voting age. Evidence from a natural experiment on the effects of electoral eligibility
In recent years, several jurisdictions have lowered the voting age, with many more discussing it. Sceptics question whether young people are ready to vote, while supporters argue that allowing them to vote would increase their specific engagement with politics. To test the latter argument, we use a series of register-based surveys of over 10,000 German adolescents. Knowing the exact birthdates of our respondents, we estimate the causal effect of …
Unequal Turnout Among the Newly Enfranchised
Unequal political participation increasingly challenges democracies. The turnout gap is particularly large among younger voters, with severe implications for future developments of democratic representation, legitimacy, and quality. This article focuses on the role of political efficacy beliefs in explaining unequal turnout among newly enfranchised citizens. We argue that internal political efficacy beliefs are particularly important for turnout …
Unequal Participation Among Youth and Immigrants
This thematic issue covers the political participation of youth and immigrants in contemporary democracies. The articles in this issue advance knowledge in youth studies, migration studies, and political behavior, theoretically and empirically. They do so by proposing innovative perspectives on voter turnout, political efficacy, protest behavior, representation preferences, and intersectional dynamics among young and immigrant-origin voters. Util…
Can Individual MPs Damage Their Party’s Brand? Quasi-Experimental Evidence from a Public Procurement Corruption Scandal
Political science (22 works) · Electoral Systems and Political Participation (19 works) · Politics (17 works) · Law (16 works) · Economics (14 works) · Law (13 works) · Political economy (12 works) · Voting (9 works) · Populism, Right-Wing Movements (8 works) · Computer Science (7 works)