TY - BOOK A1 - Munzert, Simon A1 - Rubba, Christian A1 - Meißner, Peter A1 - Nyhuis, Dominic T1 - Automated Data Collection with R: A Practical Guide to Web Scraping and Text Mining N2 - A hands on guide to web scraping and text mining for both beginners and experienced users of R Introduces fundamental concepts of the main architecture of the web and databases and covers HTTP, HTML, XML, JSON, SQL. Provides basic techniques to query web documents and data sets (XPath and regular expressions). An extensive set of exercises are presented to guide the reader through each technique. Explores both supervised and unsupervised techniques as well as advanced techniques such as data scraping and text management. Case studies are featured throughout along with examples for each technique presented. R code and solutions to exercises featured in the book are provided on a supporting website. Y1 - 2014 SN - 978-1-118-83481-7 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118834732 PB - John Wiley & Sons CY - Chichester ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Munzert, Simon A1 - Jankin, Slava A1 - al., et T1 - The 2019 report of The Lancet Countdown on health and climate change: ensuring that the health of a child born today is not defined by a changing climate JF - The Lancet N2 - The Lancet Countdown is an international, multidisciplinary collaboration, dedicated to monitoring the evolving health profile of climate change, and providing an independent assessment of the delivery of commitments made by governments worldwide under the Paris Agreement. Y1 - 2019 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(19)32596-6 VL - 394 IS - 10211 SP - 1836 EP - 1878 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Stötzer, Lukas F. A1 - Neunhoeffer, Marcel A1 - Gschwend, Thomas A1 - Munzert, Simon A1 - Sternberg, Sebastian T1 - Forecasting Elections in Multiparty Systems: A Bayesian Approach Combining Polls and Fundamentals JF - Political Analysis N2 - We offer a dynamic Bayesian forecasting model for multiparty elections. It combines data from published pre-election public opinion polls with information from fundamentals-based forecasting models. The model takes care of the multiparty nature of the setting and allows making statements about the probability of other quantities of interest, such as the probability of a plurality of votes for a party or the majority for certain coalitions in parliament. We present results from two ex ante forecasts of elections that took place in 2017 and are able to show that the model outperforms fundamentals-based forecasting models in terms of accuracy and the calibration of uncertainty. Provided that historical and current polling data are available, the model can be applied to any multiparty setting. Y1 - 2019 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1017/pan.2018.49 VL - 27 IS - 2 SP - 255 EP - 262 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Selb, Peter A1 - Munzert, Simon T1 - Examining a Most Likely Case for Strong Campaign Effects: Hitler’s Speeches and the Rise of the Nazi Party, 1927–1933 JF - American Political Science Review N2 - Hitler’s rise to power amidst an unprecedented propaganda campaign initiated scholarly interest in campaign effects. To the surprise of many, empirical studies often found minimal effects. The predominant focus of early work was on U.S. elections, though. Nazi propaganda as the archetypal and, in many ways, most likely case for strong effects has rarely been studied. We collect extensive data about Hitler’s speeches and gauge their impact on voter support at five national elections preceding the dictatorship. We use a semi-parametric difference-in-differences approach to estimate effects in the face of potential confounding due to the deliberate scheduling of events. Our findings suggest that Hitler’s speeches, while rationally targeted, had a negligible impact on the Nazis’ electoral fortunes. Only the 1932 presidential runoff, an election preceded by an extraordinarily short, intense, and one-sided campaign, yielded positive effects. This study questions the importance of charismatic leaders for the success of populist movements. Y1 - 2018 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003055418000424 VL - 112 IS - 4 SP - 1050 EP - 1066 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Göbel, Sascha A1 - Munzert, Simon T1 - Political Advertising on the Wikipedia Marketplace of Information JF - Social Science Computer Review N2 - We point to a popular yet underresearched platform of political information, the online encyclopedia Wikipedia. Considering the supply side of the marketplace, we argue that personal biographies on the platform are an attractive medium for politicians to enhance their appearance. We trace changes to biographies coming from the parliament using data that cover the entire edit histories for biographies on all German members of parliament for the three last legislative periods. Our findings show editing of personal biographies to be a persistent phenomenon. Moreover, type, timing, and driving factors of editing behavior highlight the importance politicians’ attribute to Wikipedia for pursuing reelection. Our results speak to the domains of political professionalization, voting behavior, and the general measurement of communicative patterns. Y1 - 2018 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1177/0894439317703579 VL - 36 IS - 2 SP - 157 EP - 175 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Munzert, Simon A1 - Stötzer, Lukas F. A1 - Gschwend, Thomas A1 - Neunhoeffer, Marcel A1 - Sternberg, Sebastian T1 - Zweitstimme.org. Ein strukturell-dynamisches Vorhersagemodell für Bundestagswahlen. JF - Politische Vierteljahresschrift N2 - We present results of an ex-ante forecast of party-specific vote shares at the German Federal Election 2017. To that end, we combine data from published trial heat polls with structural information. The model takes care of the multi-party nature of the setting and allows making statements about the probability of certain events, such as the plurality of votes for a party or the majority for coalition options in parliament. The forecasts of our model are continuously being updated on the platform zweitstimme.org. The value of our approach goes beyond the realms of academia: We equip journalists, political pundits, and ordinary citizens with information that can help make sense of the parties’ latent support and ultimately make voting decisions better informed. Y1 - 2017 U6 - https://doi.org/10.5771/0032-3470-2017-3-418 SN - 0032-3470 (print); 1862-2860 (online) VL - 58 IS - 3 SP - 418 EP - 441 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Munzert, Simon T1 - Forecasting elections at the constituency level: A correction–combination procedure JF - International Journal of Forecasting N2 - Scholarly efforts to forecast parliamentary elections have targeted the national level predominantly, disregarding the outcomes of constituency races. In doing so, they have frequently failed to account for systematic bias in the seats–votes curve, and been unable to provide candidates and campaign strategists with constituency-level information. On the other hand, existing accounts of constituency-level election forecasting suffer from data sparsity, leading to a lack of precision. This paper proposes a correction–combination procedure that allows for the correction of individual constituency-level forecast models for election-invariant bias, then combines these models based on their past performances. I demonstrate the use of this procedure through out-of-sample forecasts of 299 district races at the 2013 German federal election. Y1 - 2017 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijforecast.2016.12.001 VL - 33 IS - 2 SP - 467 EP - 481 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Munzert, Simon A1 - Selb, Peter T1 - Measuring Political Knowledge in Web-Based Surveys: An Experimental Validation of Visual Versus Verbal Instruments JF - Social Science Computer Review N2 - Does the opportunity to deliver visual instead of verbal stimuli of political knowledge to respondents in web-based surveys make a difference in terms of data quality? For instance, does the presentation of visual knowledge items reduce cheating, that is, looking up the answer via the Web? And do visual and verbal stimuli capture the same underlying construct? To test whether the use of visuals to measure political knowledge effectively makes a difference, we administer a question form experiment in an online survey of the German Longitudinal Election Study. Respondents are randomly assigned to one of two question formats—visual or verbal—and are asked to solve a set of eight questions on political leaders and their offices. The instruments are validated based on nonparametric item response theory and analyses of response latency. While there is no clear evidence for cheating behavior under either of the conditions, both instruments form strong knowledge scales. Results from a regression analysis indicate that the scales provide measures of closely related but not identical concepts. Y1 - 2017 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1177/0894439315616325 VL - 25 IS - 2 SP - 167 EP - 183 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Selb, Peter A1 - Munzert, Simon T1 - Forecasting the 2013 German Bundestag Election Using Many Polls and Historical Election Results JF - German Politics N2 - This article reports on an attempt to forecast the outcome of the 2013 election to the German Bundestag. In contrast to the predominant academic approach to forecast incumbent vote shares from measures of government popularity, economic conditions and other fundamental variables, we entirely relied on data from published trial heat polls. Opposite to common practice in the news media, we did not take isolated polls as election forecasts in their own right. Instead, we used historical data to assess empirically the relationship between polls and election outcomes, and combined extrapolations from current polls in a Bayesian manner. The forecast was published one month ahead of the election. The retrospective evaluation of our method was added after the election. While our method is parsimonious and provides a large lead time, the performance at the 2013 election was underwhelming. We offer additional suggestions how the approach can be improved in future scenarios. Y1 - 2016 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1080/09644008.2015.1121454 VL - 25 IS - 1 SP - 73 EP - 83 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Herrmann, Michael A1 - Munzert, Simon A1 - Selb, Peter T1 - Determining the effect of strategic voting on election results JF - Journal of the Royal Statistical Society (Series A) N2 - Speculations about whether strategic voting made a difference to the outcome of an election regularly whip up the passions of pundits, party strategists, electoral reformers and scholars alike. Yet, research on strategic voting's political effect has been hampered by the scarcity of data on district level party preferences. We propose the use of Bayesian small area estimation to predict district level preferences from just a handful of survey responses per district and comparing these predictions against election results to estimate how many voters switched sides in each district. We apply the approach to estimate how many seats changed hands as a result of strategic voting at the 1997 and 2001 UK general elections. Despite similar rates of strategic voting in both elections, the number of seats that were affected was markedly greater in 1997. Interestingly, the Liberal Democrats turn out to win the most seats because of strategic voting. We also estimate how many votes went in the ‘wrong’ direction—away from otherwise viable candidates. We validate our results by using journalistic sources and compare them with previous published estimates. Y1 - 2016 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1111/rssa.12130 VL - 179 IS - 2 SP - 583 EP - 605 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Bernauer, Julian A1 - Munzert, Simon T1 - Loyal to the Game? Strategic Policy Representation in Mixed Electoral Systems JF - Representation. Journal of Representative Democracy N2 - In Germany's compensatory mixed electoral system, alternative electoral routes lead into parliament. We study the relationship between candidates' electoral situations across both tiers and policy representation, fully accounting for candidate, party and district preferences in a multi-actor constellation and the exact electoral incentives for candidates to represent either the party or the district. The results (2009 Bundestag election data) yield evidence of an interactive effect of closeness of the district race and list safety on candidates' positioning between their party and constituency. Y1 - 2014 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1080/00344893.2014.902221 VL - 50 IS - 1 SP - 83 EP - 97 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Munzert, Simon A1 - Bauer, Paul T1 - Political Depolarization in German Public Opinion, 1980–2010 JF - Political Science Research and Methods N2 - Little is known about political polarization in German public opinion. This article offers an issue-based perspective and explores trends of opinion polarization in Germany. Public opinion polarization is conceptualized and measured as alignment of attitudes. Data from the German General Social Survey (1980 to 2010) comprise attitudes towards manifold issues, which are classified into several dimensions. This study estimates multilevel models that reveal general and issue- as well as dimension-specific levels and trends in attitude alignment for both the whole German population and sub-groups. It finds that public opinion polarization has decreased over the last three decades in Germany. In particular, highly educated and more politically interested people have become less polarized over time. However, polarization seems to have increased in attitudes regarding gender issues. These findings provide interesting contrasts to existing research on the American public. Y1 - 2013 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1017/psrm.2013.7 VL - 1 IS - 1 SP - 67 EP - 89 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Selb, Peter A1 - Herrmann, Michael A1 - Munzert, Simon A1 - Schübel, Thomas A1 - Shikano, Susumu T1 - Forecasting runoff elections using candidate evaluations from first round exit polls JF - International Journal of Forecasting N2 - We draw attention to a simple yet underappreciated way of forecasting the outcomes of elections involving two rounds of voting: surveying the voters’ candidate evaluations in first round exit polls, poststratifying the sample proportions of reported votes to official first round election returns, and redistributing the votes for eliminated competitors according to their supporters’ lower-order preferences among the viable alternatives in round two. We argue that the approach is likely to outperform standard pre-election surveys, due to its better coverage and reduced measurement error, and the possibility of correcting for sample selection. We set out the practical details of the method and demonstrate its usefulness by employing a recent German mayoral election as an empirical case. Thirteen candidates were competing in the first round, while there were six candidates in the decisive second round. The runoff result was forecast two weeks in advance with an average absolute error of less than one percentage point. Y1 - 2013 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijforecast.2013.02.001 VL - 29 IS - 4 SP - 541 EP - 547 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Selb, Peter A1 - Munzert, Simon T1 - Voter overrepresentation, vote misreporting, and turnout bias in postelection surveys JF - Electoral Studies N2 - Figures from postelection surveys often grossly overestimate election turnout. Two distinct phenomena are responsible for this gap: overrepresentation of actual voters and vote misreporting by actual nonvoters among survey respondents. Previous accounts of turnout bias are inconclusive in that they either focus on a single component, or fail to separate between the two. In this paper, we formally decompose turnout bias in election surveys into its constituent parts, assess their empirical prevalence and heterogeneity using an extensive collection of 49 vote validation studies from six countries, and employ Bayesian meta regression techniques to account for cross-study differences. Our results indicate that both election and survey characteristics such as actual voter turnout and survey response rates differentially affect the components of turnout bias. We conclude with a discussion of the threats and potentials of our findings for survey-based comparative electoral research. Y1 - 2013 UR - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0261379412001369 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.electstud.2012.11.004 VL - 32 IS - 1 SP - 186 EP - 196 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Selb, Peter A1 - Munzert, Simon T1 - Estimating Constituency Preferences from Sparse Survey Data Using Auxiliary Geographic Information JF - Political Analysis N2 - Measures of constituency preferences are of vital importance for the study of political representation and other research areas. Yet, such measures are often difficult to obtain. Previous survey-based estimates frequently lack precision and coverage due to small samples, rely on questionable assumptions or require detailed auxiliary information about the constituencies' population characteristics. We propose an alternative Bayesian hierarchical approach that exploits minimal geographic information readily available from digitalized constituency maps. If at hand, social background data are easily integrated. To validate the method, we use national polls and district-level results from the 2009 German Bundestag election, an empirical case for which detailed structural information is missing. Y1 - 2011 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1093/pan/mpr034 VL - 19 IS - 4 SP - 455 EP - 470 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Munzert, Simon T1 - Big Data in der Forschung! Big Data in der Lehre? Ein Vorschlag zur Erweiterung der bestehenden Methodenausbildung JF - Zeitschrift für Politikwissenschaft Y1 - 2014 U6 - https://doi.org/10.5771/1430-6387-2014-1-2-205 SN - 1430-6387 VL - 24 IS - 1-2 SP - 207 EP - 222 ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Munzert, Simon A1 - Nyhuis, Dominic ED - Wagemann, Claudius ED - Goerres, Achim ED - Siewert, Markus T1 - Die Nutzung von Webdaten in den Sozialwissenschaften T2 - Handbuch Methoden der Politikwissenschaft N2 - Das Kapitel bietet einen Überblick der Webdatensammlung für die sozialwissenschaftliche Forschung. Zu diesem Zweck wird nach einem praktischen Beispiel eine Übersicht der grundlegenden Webtechnologien geboten, um in einem zweiten Schritt einen vertiefenden Blick auf das Web Scraping einerseits und Programmierschnittstellen andererseits zu werfen. Die praktische Umsetzung der Webdatensammlung wird mit Code-Beispielen in der Programmiersprache R illustriert. Nach der praktischen Einführung werden Potenziale und Herausforderungen der webbasierten Sozialwissenschaft am Beispiel ausgewählter Anwendungen aus der aktuellen Forschungsliteratur diskutiert. Abschließend werden verschiedene technische und konzeptionelle Problemstellungen der Webdatensammlung dargelegt und einige weiterführende Literaturhinweise für die vertiefte Auseinandersetzung mit den Themen des Kapitels geboten. Y1 - 2019 SN - 978-3-658-16937-4 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-16937-4_22-1 PB - Springer CY - Heidelberg ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Munzert, Simon ED - Blätte (et al.), Adreas T1 - Auf dem Weg zu einer fundierten Softwareausbildung in der Politikwissenschaft T2 - Computational Social Science. Die Analyse von Big Data Y1 - 2018 SN - ISBN print: 978-3-8487-4393-3, ISBN online: 978-3-8452-8655-6 U6 - https://doi.org/10.5771/9783845286556-379 SP - 379 EP - 402 PB - Nomos CY - Baden-Baden ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Shikano, Susumu A1 - Munzert, Simon A1 - Schübel, Thomas A1 - Herrmann, Michael A1 - Selb, Peter ED - Linhart, Eric ED - Kittel, Bernhard ED - Bächtiger, André T1 - Eine empirische Schätzmethode für Valenz-Issues auf der Basis der Kandidatenbeurteilung am Beispiel der Konstanzer Oberbürgermeisterwahl 2012 T2 - Jahrbuch für Handlungs- und Entscheidungstheorie N2 - Bei der Entwicklung der räumlichen Modelle des Parteienwettbewerbs spielt die Valenz eine wichtige Rolle. Trotz der theoretischen Relevanz bleibt die Mess- und Schätzmethode der Valenz unterentwickelt. Angesichts dieser Forschungslücke schlägt dieser Beitrag ein statistisches Modell vor, das die gleichzeitige Schätzung der Kandidatenpositionen und der Valenz ermöglicht. Ein wichtiger Vorzug dieses Modells liegt darin, dass man nur die Kandidatenbeurteilungen per Skalometer benötigt, der in den meisten Umfragedaten verfügbar ist. Dieses Modell wird auf Daten angewendet, die in Rahmen der Konstanzer Oberbürgermeisterwahl 2012 erhoben wurden. Y1 - 2014 SN - 978-3-658-05007-8 SN - 978-3-658-05008-5 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-05008-5_4 SP - 113 EP - 131 PB - Springer CY - Wiesbaden ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Munzert, Simon T1 - XML and Web Technologies for Data Sciences with R JF - Journal of Statistical Software Y1 - 2014 U6 - https://doi.org/10.18637/jss.v061.b01 VL - 81 ER - TY - RPRT A1 - Munzert, Simon A1 - Papoutsi, Myrto A1 - Nowak, Holger T1 - Ein Jahr digitale Kontaktpersonennachverfolgung mit der Corona-Warn-App BT - Nutzung – Popularität – Verständnis N2 - Nachdem es zwischenzeitlich ruhig um die Corona-Warn-App geworden war, nahm die Diskussion um digitale Kontaktpersonennachverfolgung im Frühjahr 2021 wieder Fahrt auf. Die Corona-Warn-App wurde mit lange erwarteten Zusatzfeatures zur Eventregistrierung und Erfassung von Schnelltestergebnissen ausgestattet, während die Luca-App aufgrund von Sicherheitslücken und Datenschutzmängeln zunehmend in die Kritik geriet. In unserem Bericht dokumentieren wir, wie populär diese Apps mittlerweile in der deutschen Bevölkerung sind. Nach wie vor gilt: Für die Wirksamkeit dieser Technologien ist die breitflächige Nutzung in der Bevölkerung entscheidend. In unserer Erhebung, einem Smartphone-basierten Nutzertracking, das zwischen dem 19. Mai und 01. Juni 2021 durchgeführt wurde, zeigt sich nach wie vor deutliche Unterschiede in der Nutzung der beiden bekanntesten Apps – Corona-Warn-App und Luca-App. Im Vergleich zur vorherigen Befragung (März/April 2021) sind jedoch einige Verschiebungen beobachtbar: Die Luca-App ist bekannter geworden, gleichzeitig steigt die Sorge um den Datenschutz der App allenfalls leicht an. Bei vielen Befragten besteht nach wie vor große Unklarheit über die Unterschiede in Funktionsweise und Zweck dieser Apps. Y1 - 2021 UR - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:kobv:b1570-opus4-39994 U6 - https://doi.org/10.48462/opus4-3999 ER -