Suchergebnisse

"Darüber, wie viele und welche BürgerInnen bei österreichischen Nationalratswahlen 'richtig', (d.h. ihren Einstellungen und Präferenzen entsprechend) gewählt haben, ist wenig bekannt. Der vorliegende Artikel möchte diese Lücke schließen. Untersucht wird, wie es um 'richtiges Wählen' bei der Nationalratswahl 2008 bestellt war und welche Einflussfaktoren 'richtiges Wahlverhalten' bedingten. Besonderes Augenmerk liegt dabei auf der Frage, welche Rolle das individuelle Mediennutzungsverhalten bzw. die rezipierte Medienberichterstattung für 'richtige Wahlentscheidungen' spielten. Es zeigt sich, dass bei der Nationalratswahl 2008 lediglich ein geringer Anteil der WählerInnen 'richtig' wählte. In Bezug auf die Einflussfaktoren ist hervorzuheben, dass sich der Konsum bestimmter Medien hemmend auf 'richtige Wahlentscheidungen' auszuwirken scheint, wobei die Ergebnisse darauf hindeuten, dass dieser negative Effekt vor allem auf eine vergleichsweise eindimensionale Berichterstattung dieser Medien zurückgeführt werden kann." (Autorenreferat)

"About half of German voters have a correct understanding of the German electoral system. The other half incorrectly believes that either the first vote or that the first and second vote together are decisive for the distribution of seats. As a consequence of this ignorance concerning the mode of operation of the German electoral system, part of the electorate casts their vote in a manner inconsistent with their intentions. Some observed cases of strategic voting, i.e. when voters deviate from their 'true' preference with their first or second vote, can obviously be traced back to this ignorance of the electoral system. In this sense in the Federal election of 2013, a non-negligible part of the supporters of the CDU/CSU voted with their second vote for the FDP under the wrong assumption that this vote was not important for the distribution of seats. At any rate this behavior has caused the CDU/CSU to suffer a loss of seats, possibly it is even responsible for the loss of the absolute majority of seats." (author's abstract)

"The 2011 reforms of the laws guiding the elections to the state parliaments in Bremen and Hamburg introduced systems of combined open and closed list proportional representation: Each voter can now cast five votes for party lists (list vote) and/or specific candidates (candidate vote). Seats are assigned as 'list' or 'candidate' mandates according to quotas derived from the list vote and candidate vote totals. This system can result in a paradox situation in which contenders can miss a seat due to having won too many candidate votes; twice this has happened in the four post-reform elections. Ensuing negative weights of their candidate votes implies a breach of the principle of electoral equality. Moreover, since voters pondering whether to cast candidate votes or not cannot gauge whether their decision will lead to negative weights, the electoral system is not transparent. The problem could be solved by introducing a mechanism that corrects for negative voting weights candidatewise. But this would make the electoral system more complicated. Alternatively, the quota system could be replaced by assigning candidate mandates only to contenders whose candidate vote totals surpass the natural hurdle, i.e. the minimum number of votes needed to win a seat. This would reduce both the number of candidate mandates allotted and the electoral system's complexity." (author's abstract)