Politicians' email communication with voters: A field experiment for the 2021 Bundestag elections.
First-time voters hold polarized views on migrant issues. Few is known about how politicians react to this peculiar phenomenon in democracies. This paper studies whether rational behavior drives political elites' response behavior in a RCT email responsiveness study. We contacted 1554 candidate...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Public Library of Science (PLoS)
2025-01-01
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| Series: | PLoS ONE |
| Online Access: | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0324542 |
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| _version_ | 1849420720807870464 |
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| author | Ekkehard A Köhler Marius D May |
| author_facet | Ekkehard A Köhler Marius D May |
| author_sort | Ekkehard A Köhler |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | First-time voters hold polarized views on migrant issues. Few is known about how politicians react to this peculiar phenomenon in democracies. This paper studies whether rational behavior drives political elites' response behavior in a RCT email responsiveness study. We contacted 1554 candidates for the German Bundestag shortly before the 2021 election and asked about their stance on dual citizenship. We went into the field as first-time voting high-school students and varied their stances on dual citizenship, migration backgrounds and genders. Introducing a theoretical framework based on the single-policy task model and supplementing it with costly persuasion, we are able to disentangle and test for partisanship and opportunism. Our main results are as follows: First, both partisanship and opportunism explain the candidates' response behavior. Second, candidates exert more effort if they disagree with a voter than if they agree with a voter. |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj-art-65d469d886d343b59fbfad1dcc085f8e |
| institution | Kabale University |
| issn | 1932-6203 |
| language | English |
| publishDate | 2025-01-01 |
| publisher | Public Library of Science (PLoS) |
| record_format | Article |
| series | PLoS ONE |
| spelling | doaj-art-65d469d886d343b59fbfad1dcc085f8e2025-08-20T03:31:40ZengPublic Library of Science (PLoS)PLoS ONE1932-62032025-01-01207e032454210.1371/journal.pone.0324542Politicians' email communication with voters: A field experiment for the 2021 Bundestag elections.Ekkehard A KöhlerMarius D MayFirst-time voters hold polarized views on migrant issues. Few is known about how politicians react to this peculiar phenomenon in democracies. This paper studies whether rational behavior drives political elites' response behavior in a RCT email responsiveness study. We contacted 1554 candidates for the German Bundestag shortly before the 2021 election and asked about their stance on dual citizenship. We went into the field as first-time voting high-school students and varied their stances on dual citizenship, migration backgrounds and genders. Introducing a theoretical framework based on the single-policy task model and supplementing it with costly persuasion, we are able to disentangle and test for partisanship and opportunism. Our main results are as follows: First, both partisanship and opportunism explain the candidates' response behavior. Second, candidates exert more effort if they disagree with a voter than if they agree with a voter.https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0324542 |
| spellingShingle | Ekkehard A Köhler Marius D May Politicians' email communication with voters: A field experiment for the 2021 Bundestag elections. PLoS ONE |
| title | Politicians' email communication with voters: A field experiment for the 2021 Bundestag elections. |
| title_full | Politicians' email communication with voters: A field experiment for the 2021 Bundestag elections. |
| title_fullStr | Politicians' email communication with voters: A field experiment for the 2021 Bundestag elections. |
| title_full_unstemmed | Politicians' email communication with voters: A field experiment for the 2021 Bundestag elections. |
| title_short | Politicians' email communication with voters: A field experiment for the 2021 Bundestag elections. |
| title_sort | politicians email communication with voters a field experiment for the 2021 bundestag elections |
| url | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0324542 |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT ekkehardakohler politiciansemailcommunicationwithvotersafieldexperimentforthe2021bundestagelections AT mariusdmay politiciansemailcommunicationwithvotersafieldexperimentforthe2021bundestagelections |