Elias Koch

Very happy to see this out in @bjpols.bsky.social

The last paper from my dissertation has found a home

Picture of LSE campus

I’m hiring for a full-time one-year Research Assistant (“pre-doc”) position

Come work at LSE doing research on energy markets and environmental economics. Great opportunity to build research skills ahead of applying to PhD programmes

Deadline March 27th, apply here: jobs.lse.ac.uk/Vacancies/W/...

Ganz herzlichen Glückwunsch, Kira!!🎈🎉

2 two-year postdocs on children’s political socialization at Aarhus University - Vacancy at Aarhus University Vacancy at Department of Political Science, Aarhus University

🔥 POSTDOC POSITIONS ON CHILDREN'S POLITICAL SOCIALIZATION 🔥

Wanna understand young people's beliefs about political leadership, politics, and power? Then this is your chance! I'm looking for two 2-year postdocs to join my ERC-funded research project @au.dk
international.au.dk/about/profil...

Join us tomorrow for this exciting talk by @ankuepfer.bsky.social in the MZES Social Science Data Lab!

Details and Zoom link ⬇️

Building on my General Election Prediction App, I thought it might be fun to build an app that allows you to look at UK constituencies in a bunch of cool ways. So this app doesn't turn polls into seats. It looks at seats as they are.

livedataoxford.shinyapps.io/Constituency...

Quick thread 1/n

Who produces hate speech? And how does that matter for content moderation?

We show that across different countries and platforms, a relatively small share of users are responsible for a very large share of hate - overall, 5% write 83-100% of hateful content.

www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

This will be the 3rd edition. If you study pol. behaviour and work on #CEE, this is the right place to present your research. Dates: June 25-26. Discussants include @simonhix.bsky.social & @eliasdinas.bsky.social. Highlight: roundtable on dem. erosion with H. Kriesi, M. Svolik & N. Wunsch.

Very happy to share that our paper "Political socialization and immigrants' support for progressive politics: the case of green parties" with @antvalentim.bsky.social is now published in @psrm.bsky.social!

Link to paper: doi.org/10.1017/psrm...

Short summary in 🧵below:

(1/5)

The Data Science Lab presents Inside Data Journalism, a spring talk series featuring leading practitioners who share practical insights into their work and the evolving field of data journalism.

More ℹ️👉 www.hertie-school.org/en/datascien...

Am Sonntag ist Landtagswahl in Baden-Württemberg. Was sagt das Zweistimme.org Modell vorher? ⬇️

An image of the schedule with speaker images. You can find the full schedule on tada.cool.

🚨 TADA Speaker Series Spring 2026 schedule is here! 🚨

We've assembled a fantastic lineup of researchers exploring the future of survey research in the age of LLMs.

Mar 18 - May 27, online at 17:00 CEST. Join us!

More info & signup: tada.cool

New working paper!

I examine whether exposure to local unemployment during adolescence shapes immigration attitudes in adulthood, focusing on the long-term imprint of early economic insecurity

doi.org/10.31235/osf...

🚨 New WP w/ @leonardocarella.bsky.social on OSF

doi.org/10.31235/osf...

We usually think that social identities precede preferences

We show the reverse is also true: people update their social identities to match their immigration preferences

Focus: class identity in 🇬🇧 + Christian identity in 🇮🇹

Very happy to see our new article “Reference groups and electoral behavior” (coauthored with Rune Stubager, Christoffer Hentzer Dausgaard & Michael Lewis-Beck) published!

Using ANES, DNES and AUTNES data, we show that liking or disliking social groups shapes vote choice.

Why does mainstream accommodation of far-right and Eurosceptic parties often electorally backfire? In my 3rd dissertation paper, just published in @wepsocial.bsky.social, I argue that voters specifically punish internally divided parties for accommodation: doi.org/10.1080/0140...
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⏳ Nicht vergessen: Noch bis zum 28.2. sind Bewerbungen - und Vorschläge - für unseren #Dissertationspreis 2026 möglich!

#Promotion #PhDone #Postdoc #Politikwissenschaft #PoWi

Legislators talk less about the future as they age | The Journal of Politics: Vol 0, No ja

Such a fascinating paper by @chanret.bsky.social, Vesa Koskimaa & Patrick Leslie 👏
www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...

Attitude Manipulation and Voting Intentions - Political Behavior A large body of research documents the substantial effects of persuasive communication on political attitudes. However, opinion manipulation often represents merely an intermediate goal in a greater e...

Now in print (and open access):

What happens when voters learn their party disagrees with them?

I ran a pre-registered experiment with a representative sample of ~3,000 German voters to find out.

link.springer.com/article/10.1...

🧵

Nick Vivyan, Chris Hanretty (@chanret.bsky.social) and I have a new book out: “Idiosyncratic Issue Opinion and Political Choice”. The core of the book is making the argument that citizens’ views about political issues neither reduce to an ideological orientation nor to a lack of substance. (1/10)

Auch auf diesem Wege nochmal ganz herzliche Glückwünsche 🎉🎈

Countering Illiberalism in Liberal Democracies: Information, Legacies, Temporalities - Giovanni Capoccia, 2026 The article lays the foundations of a research agenda on the conditions favoring short-term success against emerging illiberal challenges—necessary for democrat...

New article and special issue!
Just out in Comparative Political Studies: “Countering Illiberalism in Liberal Democracies: Information, Legacies, Temporalities", the intro to a special issue on countering illiberalism in liberal democracies.
journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
Thread 🧵1/7

The Way Back After Backsliding: Public Opinion and the Restoration of Democracy - Kristian Frederiksen, Robb Willer, Michael Bang Petersen, 2026 Abundant prior research has analyzed the mass public’s role in democratic backsliding. Comparatively little research has studied democratic restoration, the reh...

Great to see "The Way Back After Backsliding: Public Opinion and the Restoration of Democracy" with @robbwiller.bsky.social and @m-b-petersen.bsky.social out in @cpsjournal.bsky.social

journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1...

Looking for RAs based in Berlin/Brandenburg. Please share! 🙏

🚨New publication! Thrilled to finally see this paper out in @psrm.bsky.social 🎉

📊I study how gender shapes coalition preferences among politicians. Turns out mayors prefer forming governments with women-led parties, perceiving them as better communicators and more competent governors.

Do open lists increase turnout? Probably not, but they increase rates of voter error: New evidence from Spain Leonardo Carella Abstract This article challenges the claim that open-list systems are beneficial for electoral participation, by reassessing and extending the analysis in a notable empirical paper that advances this argument. The paper (Carlos Sanz, “The effect of electoral systems on voter turnout: Evidence from a natural experiment”, PSRM, 2017) leverages a population-based discontinuity in Spanish municipal elections (1979–2011), where towns with fewer than 250 residents employ open lists whereas larger towns employ closed lists. Through a series of statistical tests and the inspection of alternative data sources, I show that the positive effect of open lists on turnout estimated in the paper is dubious, for two reasons: (1) non-random missing data, due to inconsistencies in how non-valid votes were recorded above and below the threshold, and (2) compound treatment issues, due to changes in list-length requirements at the threshold. I then proceed to show that, rather than improving turnout, the more complex open-list ballot actually hinders voters’ ability to express their preferences, by increasing the incidence of voter errors relative to closed lists (reflected in higher rates of ‘null’ voting). To support a causal interpretation of this relationship, I present evidence from the analysis of heterogeneous treatment effects, and show that a similar pattern obtains in Spanish general elections, where open and closed lists are used concurrently for the election of the country’s bicameral parliament. I conclude by discussing the implications of the analysis for implementing population-based regression discontinuities and evaluating electoral system effects.

New paper out at @electoralstudies.bsky.social.

I show that - contrary to claims that personalised electoral systems are good for participation - Open Lists have no effect on turnout relative to Closed Lists; in fact, they increase rates of voter error. 🗳️
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

@chflachsland.bsky.social and I are looking for an RA -- please share widely!

BIG congrats Lisa, well deserved! 🎉

partycoloR is now on CRAN! Started as a simple idea 6 years ago, now it's a full-featured package. Extract party colors and logos from Wikipedia with one line of code. It's already powering ParlGov Dashboard.

install.packages("partycoloR")

Interested in an academic career in political science? Do you want to work in a vibrant department with friendly colleagues? Interested in climate governance or EU studies? Do to live close to nature, but also enjoy a vibrant cultural scene? Appreciate a good work-life balance?