Bitte verwenden Sie diesen Link, um diese Publikation zu zitieren, oder auf sie als Internetquelle zu verweisen: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/203247 
Erscheinungsjahr: 
2019
Schriftenreihe/Nr.: 
CIW Discussion Paper No. 3/2019
Verlag: 
Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, Centrum für Interdisziplinäre Wirtschaftsforschung (CIW), Münster
Zusammenfassung: 
Despite controversial debates about the social acceptability of its nationalist program, the rightwing populist AfD has recently entered all state parliaments as well as the federal parliament in Germany. Although professed AfD voters faced a likely risk of social stigmatization, electoral support followed a clear upward trend. In order to explain these dynamics, we analyze the impact of information shocks with respect to aggregate-level AfD support on individual party choices. Unexpectedly high aggregate support for a populist party may indicate a higher social acceptance of its platform and reduce the social desirability bias in self-reported party preferences. Consequently, the likelihood to reveal an AfD preference increases. We test this mechanism in an event-study approach, exploiting quasi-random variation in survey interviews conducted closely around German state elections. We define election information shocks as deviations of actual AfD vote shares from pre-election polls and link these to the individual disposition to report an AfD preference in subsequent survey interviews. Our results suggest that exposure to higher-than expected AfD support significantly increases the individual probability to report an AfD vote intention by up to 3 percentage points.
Schlagwörter: 
voting behavior
populist parties
contagion effects
information shocks
socialdesirability bias
JEL: 
C21
D71
D72
D83
D91
Dokumentart: 
Working Paper

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