Se. Finkel et Pr. Schrott, CAMPAIGN EFFECTS ON VOTER CHOICE IN THE GERMAN ELECTION OF 1990, British journal of political science, 25, 1995, pp. 349-377
Using national survey panel data collected in Germany during the 1990
Bundestag election campaign, we develop a model to assess the effect o
f the campaign on individual votes and the election outcome. We find t
hat the dominant effects of the campaign on German voters, as in the L
azarsfeld er al. studies from the 1940s and in more recent US research
, were the 'reinforcement' of earlier preferences and the 'activation'
of latent vote dispositions based on fundamental individual attitudes
such as party affiliation and left-right ideology. At the same time,
the analysis shows that the number of campaign 'converts' (those who v
ote against their dispositions and prior preferences) was approximatel
y 14 per cent of the electorate. The vote division among these individ
uals was overwhelmingly pro-government, suggesting that the 1990 Germa
n campaign altered a sufficient number of votes to turn what was an ev
en contest, based on the electorate's initial political dispositions,
into a solid government coalition victory.