Franziska Maier

Das Wunschdenken über die AfD-Wählerschaft:

Die AfD ist nur unwesentlich stärker als bei Landtagswahlen 2016 - da war sie ebenfalls drittstärkste Partei.

Der Vergleich zu 2021 überschätzt massiv den angeblichen Wahlerfolg heute. Abstände zu Grüne & CDU nahezu gleich groß wie 2016.

ARD & ZDF wollen aber lieber die andere Story. 🤷‍♂️

#ltwbw

An Özdemir win would matter in another sense too. 7 decades after the first "guest workers" came to the federal republic, he would be the first minister-president of a German state to have Turkish roots. It wasn't a big factor in the campaign - people just like him (⬇️) - but is a moment nonetheless.

Are female economists treated differently than males in academic seminars?

These authors wanted to know whether gender shapes how scholars are treated when presenting research.

So they built a massive dataset of 2,000+ economics seminars, job talks, and conference presentations from 2019–2023...

Are the Politically Active Better Represented? - Political Behavior Political participation is considered an important path for people to influence politics. However, whether those who participate actually see more of their preferred policies implemented remains an op...

Voters are not substantially better represented than nonvoters. However, people active in different types of nonelectoral political behavior, such as demonstrating, are better represented than the non-active link.springer.com/article/10.1...

🚨Happy to finally see this out in the @ejprjournal.bsky.social (with @leonardocarella.bsky.social)

⁉️ Does growing up when immigration is salient make people vote for parties they agree with on immigration *for the rest of their lives*?

doi.org/10.1017/S147...

🫶 Wishing everyone restful holidays and a happy start into the new year! We look back on many inspiring moments in 2025, and forward to many more interesting discussions and projects in 2026 ✨🎄

🚀 How do citizens imagine their future democracy – on Mars and on Earth?

Using large survey experiments in the US and Germany, we explore how people envision democratic governance with and without path dependencies 🪐

Read the preprint here ➡️ osf.io/preprints/so...

Logo of Political Science Research and Methods in monochrome featuring the initials 'PS' and 'RM' interlinked in an elegant serif font on a dark background.

#OpenAccess from @psrm.bsky.social -

Is ChatGPT conservative or liberal? A novel approach to assess ideological stances and biases in generative LLMs - https://cup.org/48Oh8Co

- Christina P. Walker & @joantimoneda.bsky.social

#FirstView #ChatGPT

🌍The latest cleavage: the universalist divide

@mrsteenbergen.bsky.social , @dpzollinger.bsky.social , @siljahausermann.bsky.social, @simonbornschier.bsky.social, and @lhaffert.bsky.social provide evidence from the 2024 European Election Study 👇

🔗 www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

We were happy to welcome @lalamur.bsky.social who gave a brilliant talk on the impact of political talk about feminism when dating 💘
Future research projects and collaborations were also discussed 🤝 - stay tuned! 🤩

Thank you, Stuttgart, for such a wonderful time! Special thanks to DDME team @demolabs.bsky.social with @franziskamaier.bsky.social @seraphinearnold.bsky.social & André Bächtiger! 💜

Yesterday, the DDME Team held a workshop as part of the Freedom Week in Berlin, where participants got to design democracy on Mars! 🚀

💡 It was an inspiring experience to turn survey research into practice and watch participants discuss the pros and cons of involving different actors in the process.

Descriptive representation has comparatively limited appeal for citizens, but is more important for historically marginalised groups. Citizens do not only focus on local politicians, but also seek representation from politicians in other districts www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

“Because of the tremendous wealth of key figures…major corporations have enabled, collaborated with, and turned a blind eye to efforts to suppress, torture, falsely imprison, terrorise and murder dissenters … around the world.” Twitter [gave] the Saudi government a reach well beyond its borders.

BJPolS abstract discussing the effects of communication modes on societal polarization during the COVID-19 crisis, with specific reference to Germany and Austria.

NEW -

Deepening, Bridging, and Moving Minds in Stressful Times - https://cup.org/4pG5tfo

"In highly polarized situations, however, open communication is the only way to communicatively reach out to people."

- Simon Stocker, André Bächtiger, Bernhard Kittel & Marco Steenbergen

#OpenAccess

American Journal of Political Science | MPSA Journal | Wiley Online Library Concern that immigration worsens crime problems is prevalent across Western publics. How does it shape electoral politics? Prior research asserted a growing left–right divide in immigration attitudes...

Glad to see this out at @ajpseditor.bsky.social! I show that the immigration-crime issue, when salient, can shift leftist cosmopolitans to the Right. This is due to leftist voters being more conservative on crime than leftist parties.

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

🚨 New paper in @thejop.bsky.social

Why do politicians often misperceive what citizens' policy positions are?

@simonotjes.bsky.social and I study ~10,000 estimates of public opinion by politicians in Denmark & the Netherlands to uncover the sources of these (mis)perceptions

Thread 🧵1/10

I can't wait for our Workshop on "Democracy on Mars" during the Berlin Freedom Week, with my favourite colleagues AND hosted in my favourite place, the Schwarzkopf-Stiftung Junges Europa 🚀 🫰 Sign up if you are in Berlin on November 15th! berlin-freedom-week.com/event/wie-so...

In den Niederlanden gab es am Wochenende rechtsextreme Ausschreitungen. In den 4 größten Ländern Europas führen rechtsradikale Parteien in den Umfragen. Ich verstehe den Fokus auf das Spektakel, aber der Dauerfokus auf Trump, Kimmel, Kirk scheint mir stark zu vernachlässigen was in Europa passiert.

Opponents, not enemies: disentangling the relationship between polarization and democracy in Europe Contradicting claims exist about the extent to which identity-based ideological polarization is eroding or improving democracy. We address this ambiguity by disentangling different forms of polariz...

European democracies are harmed by societal polarization, but can benefit from partisan polarization: the former lowers quality and trust, the latter is linked to better democratic quality www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

📢 My last PhD paper is out in Legislative Studies Quarterly 📢

📌 Main finding
➡️ Party control of speaking time in parliament limits MPs’ geographical focus
➡️ Open access increases constituency representation

🔗 Read it open access here: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Ganz herzlichen Glückwunsch! 💐

Studie - Social Media sind essenziell, um junge Menschen mit politischen Themen zu erreichen Ohne Social-Media-Plattformen erreichen politische Akteur:innen junge Menschen mit politischen Themen kaum. Denn über das politische Geschehen informieren sich junge Zielgruppen mehrheitlich auf Socia...

Instagram und TikTok sind die Kanäle, über die sich junge Menschen am häufigsten über Politik informieren. Die Mehrheit folgt sogar politischen Influencer:innen. Unsere Studie mit dem @dpzberlin.bsky.social zeigt, wie die Social-Media-Kommunikation der Politiker:innen bei der Jugend ankommt. (bu)

🚨 New working paper alert 🚨
Missing summer — and the Tour de France? Don’t worry, we got you covered. 🚴‍♂️🚴‍♂️🚴‍♂️
In this paper, we show that being on the route of Tour de France reduces far-right voting. osf.io/preprints/so...

This is a paper I really care about. I feel the core message is very important for social scientists in general, and political scientists in particular.

"Quantitative Research in Political Science is Greatly Underpowered."

(with A+ co-authors)

God give me the reviewer strength of a well-caffeinated sweetener-loving junior scholar in an investigative mood

Wirklich Banane...aber eine Sex and the City Neuauflage mit UN-Diplomatin in der Hauptrolle würde ich eigentlich gerne sehen.

How can experts, citizens and representatives collaborate? What role could AI take in governance? Together with Civocracy 📢, we are preparing an online deliberation around these questions for a… | Dem... How can experts, citizens and representatives collaborate? What role could AI take in governance? Together with Civocracy 📢, we are preparing an online deliberation around these questions for a democr...

How to visually represent different democratic systems? We are currently working with an awesome design studio to figure it out. A sneak peak of a sketch for "Democracy on Mars" is here 👉 www.linkedin.com/feed/update/...