Voters and Voting in Context: Multiple Contexts and the Heterogeneous German Electorate

Political behaviour and the formation of political opinions are inherently inter-twined with the environment in which citizens are embedded when making political decisions. In order to properly understand voter behaviour it is thus essential to take into account the role of multiple contexts. This book employs voter- and candidate-surveys as well as media analyses from one of the most comprehensive national election studies (GLES) to investigate systematically the contextual influences on voting in Germany in the early twenty-first century. Contributions in this book explore contextual effects by the media and by partisan communication on political attitudes, the dependence of turnout decisions on characteristics of the personal, regional and political context as well voting behaviour in the context of political arenas, partisan cues, and media reports. This book represents a comprehensive but yet comprehensible study of one essential element to voting behaviour: the interplay of individuals and contextual features.