Unkelbach Fabienne, John Melvin, Vogel Vera
Chair of Consumer and Economic Psychology, University of Mannheim, A5, 6, 68159 Mannheim, Germany.
Chair of Microsociology and Social Psychology, University of Mannheim, Mannheim, Germany.
Polit Vierteljahresschr. 2023;64(1):51-78. doi: 10.1007/s11615-022-00417-3. Epub 2022 Aug 10.
Published findings of opinion polls are an important part of the political coverage before elections. Thus, researchers have long investigated whether the perceived popularity of political parties can lead to even more voters following this majority. However, empirical findings on this so-called political bandwagon effect are mixed. In the present paper, we integrate theories from political science and social psychology to explain these inconsistencies through social class as a potential moderating variable. Based on previous findings regarding consumer decisions, we hypothesized that bandwagon effects are greater among voters with lower social class. To investigate this hypothesis, we combined data from the German Longitudinal Election Study (GLES) Rolling Cross-Section 2021, which was collected over the 55 days before the 2021 German federal election, with the results of published preelection polls. Using separate multilevel models for each of the parties, we found no evidence for bandwagon effects. Only for the Social Democratic Party were poll results related to voting intentions assessed on the following day, suggesting that polls might have contributed to the party's electoral success. However, there was no evidence for a moderation of bandwagon effects by voters' social class. Accordingly, we could not resolve the mixed findings in this field of research. Our results point to important open questions in research on bandwagon effects in multiparty systems as well as on effects of social class in Germany.
The online version of this article (10.1007/s11615-022-00417-3) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
已公布的民意调查结果是选举前政治报道的重要组成部分。因此，长期以来，研究人员一直在调查政党的受欢迎程度是否会导致更多选民追随多数派。然而，关于这种所谓的政治跟风效应的实证研究结果并不一致。在本文中，我们整合了政治学和社会心理学的理论，以社会阶层作为一个潜在的调节变量来解释这些不一致之处。基于先前关于消费者决策的研究结果，我们假设社会阶层较低的选民中跟风效应更大。为了验证这一假设，我们将2021年德国纵向选举研究（GLES）滚动横截面数据（在2021年德国联邦选举前55天收集）与已公布的选举前民意调查结果相结合。针对每个政党使用单独的多层次模型，我们没有发现跟风效应的证据。只有社会民主党在第二天的投票意向评估中，民意调查结果与之相关，这表明民意调查可能对该党的选举成功起到了作用。然而，没有证据表明选民的社会阶层对跟风效应有调节作用。因此，我们无法解决这一研究领域中相互矛盾的研究结果。我们的研究结果指出了多党制中跟风效应研究以及德国社会阶层效应研究中重要的开放性问题。
本文的在线版本（10.1007/s11615-022-00417-3）包含补充材料，授权用户可以获取。
