Working Papers

2026

1. Working Paper

   

   When Democracy is at Stake: Polity-Seeking in Party Competition

   Elias Koch

   2026

   Available on Request

   Abstract

   When do political parties accept tangible costs to defend democracy? Conventional theories conceptualise competitive parties as vote-, office-, and policy-seekers operating within a stable democratic order. I challenge this perspective by arguing that parties may also engage in polity-seeking: pursuing the strategic goal of shaping the institutions, procedures, and norms that structure political competition. I argue that parties I call committed preservers prioritise defending the pluralist polity when it comes under threat, even at the expense of conventional electoral, office, or policy objectives. Two studies illustrate this argument. Study I analyses government formations across 33 democracies (1970–2025), showing that coalitions committed to pluralism are more likely to form, particularly when polity challengers hold greater parliamentary strength. Study II reports findings from an experiment with local officials in four European democracies, showing that systemic threats increase elite support for costly polity-seeking strategies. This effect is absent in Switzerland, where the strategy tested is itself contested. These findings illuminate how democratic threats reshape party competition and the strategic trade-offs parties are willing to make to preserve the political order.

2. Working Paper

   

   Visual presentation raises trust in election polls

   Elias Koch, Linus Hagemann, Simon Munzert, Hannah Rajski, Thomas Gschwend, Cornelius Erfort, and Lukas Stoetzer

   2026

   Abstract PDF

   Election polls are arguably the most visible public opinion signal in modern democracies, yet the design choices media outlets make when reporting them have never been systematically examined. In a preregistered visual conjoint experiment during the 2025 German federal election campaign, 22,976 voters evaluated randomly varied versions of the same poll report, crossing format, reference values, and technical information in 160 designs. Bar charts, dot plots, and line graphs were rated more attractive and more trustworthy than text-only reports. Trust gains were largest among respondents with lower data and polling literacy and less accurate beliefs about current poll standings, whereas the appeal of visualization was greatest among the most literate. Disclosing the margin of error made reports less attractive without affecting trust, and no format improved expectations about the election outcome. The reporting formats most commonly used are thus not the most effective at fostering trust and accessibility.

3. Working Paper

   

   Can an Interactive Dashboard Teach Polling Literacy? Evidence from a Large-Scale Experiment

   Simon Munzert, Linus Hagemann, Elias Koch, Hannah Rajski, Thomas Gschwend, Cornelius Erfort, and Lukas Stoetzer

   2026

   Available on request

   Abstract

   Election polls are among the most visible quantitative inputs into democratic deliberation, yet their production process remains opaque to most citizens. Without a working understanding of how polls are produced, people may place too much trust in flawed estimates or dismiss credible ones as biased—either way undermining the capacity of polls to meaningfully inform public debate. We build an interactive dashboard that simulates key pollster decisions—setting sample sizes, choosing recruitment methods, applying statistical weights—and evaluate its use in a pre-registered survey experiment (N = 52,765, fielded ahead of the 2025 German federal election). The intervention fails to achieve any of its three pre-registered objectives. It does not improve polling-related knowledge: aggregate effects are null, and while the dashboard teaches respondents that representative polls need not be enormous, it undermines their understanding of why statistical weighting matters. It does not foster more positive attitudes towards polls: perceived usefulness is unchanged, while treated respondents become more critical of polls’ influence on politics. And it does not sharpen evaluative behavior: in a forced-choice conjoint task, treated respondents become less appreciative of weighting rather than more so. All effects are small in absolute terms, and our sample is large enough to be confident in this conclusion. These findings suggest that interactive tools can backfire when they lack pedagogical scaffolding, and that improving public understanding of polls is harder than building a better tool.

4. Working Paper

   

   Coordination Spirals in Proportional Elections

   Elias Koch, Thomas Gschwend, and Lukas Stoetzer

   2026

   In Preparation

   Abstract

   Fragmentation in proportional representation (PR) systems is often seen as a source of difficulties for government formation and electoral accountability. What can hold these party systems together? We argue that PR also contains an inherent coordination mechanism that concentrates competition on the two leading parties. When polls signal a close race at the top, and both parties hold balanced potentials in the electorate, voters shift support away from smaller parties toward the frontrunners, thereby reducing party system fragmentation. We show formally that when voters derive utility from which party wins, equilibrium behavior exhibits a coordination spiral in close contests: strategic voting feeds back into greater concentration on the top two. We test this argument in two studies. First, linking pre-election polls to outcomes across 320 PR elections, we find that the combined top-two vote share rises by up to 10 percentage points in close races, with effects emerging roughly two to four weeks before election day. Second, panel data from the 2021 German campaign — a close and balanced race — show that the same dynamic operates at the individual level. Together, these findings reveal a previously underappreciated stabilizing force that arises endogenously from electoral competition in proportional systems.

2025

1. Working Paper

   

   When Are Parties Going Off-Topic and Which Issues Do They Sacrifice?

   Elias Koch, and Christoph Ivanusch

   2025

   Under Review

   Abstract

   Are parties actively reframing political debates to divert attention from issues they prefer not to address? Parties selectively emphasize issues, but it has remained unclear whether they strategically sacrifice others when doing so. We argue that parties are strategically going off-topic by diverting from the agenda, to emphasize other issues. To test this argument, we trace shifts in parties’ issue attention in the German Bundestag (2009–2021) and the Austrian Nationalrat (1996–2019), combining legislative bills, speeches, and party manifestos, classified with fine-tuned transformer models. Following GLM and Difference-in-Differences approaches, we show that parties are more likely to go off-topic when the agenda is dominated by issues they neither own nor prioritize programmatically, seeking to redirect attention toward more advantageous matters. Hence, parties not only selectively emphasize issues but also consciously sacrifice others, guided by consistent rationales. Consequently, parties with heterogeneous issue preferences have strategic incentives to divert from the agenda.