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This analysis of issue emphasis on Twitter by the seven main German parties during the 2017 federal election campaign underlines the importance of taking a time-sensitive approach when investigating issue competition. We show that the attention parties give to issues they are associated with fluctuates frequently on social media and alternates with other thematic priorities that may not be 'owned'. In the digital age, therefore, established theories of issue ownership come under pressure. Our findings reveal that short-term issue emphasis is driven by exogenous shocks and spatial considerations. The exact mechanism behind parties' decisions to emphasise a specific issue in the short run depends on the type of issue in focus. Communication on economic left-right and socio-cultural issues is shaped by different strategies. Our study reveals that when studying issue competition online different policy dimensions need to be distinguished just as the temporal dynamics need to be understood. This needs to be done instead of aggregating data to give a holistic account. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the topic of life satisfaction and its determinants has drawn increasing attention among political scientists, most studies have focused mainly on macro-level variables, and often overlooked the role of individuals’ attitudes vis-à-vis their governments. The present article attempts to fill this gap by examining whether citizens’ left–right self-placement and ideological distance from their governments exert an independent effect on life satisfaction. Utilizing a dataset spanning a quarter century and containing nearly 70,000 respondents, we demonstrate a curvilinear relationship between ideological orientations and happiness, with self-identified radicals on both ends of the spectrum happier than moderate citizens. Moreover, we show that while propinquity between self-position and government position contributes to happiness, this effect is highly mediated by individual locations along the left–right spectrum: centrists report higher levels of happiness the closer they are to their government, while the opposite is true for radicals. The normative implication of our findings is that moderate governments may present a comparative advantage in enhancing the overall level of happiness of their citizens. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Previous authors have found greater political support among electoral winners than losers, but they define winners and losers at a single time point, and employ a dichotomous categorization that neglects possible variations within each group. This study considers both the past history of winning or losing and the impact of ideological distance from the government on a political support indicator -- satisfaction with democracy. Using a multilevel model covering thirty-one countries, the authors show that the relationship between winner/loser status and satisfaction with democracy has a marginal dynamic nature and a policy content. Among present losers, previous experience of victory assuaged dissatisfaction, while among those presenting a consolidated 'winning' record, only high ideological proximity to the current government boosted political support. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Expert surveys have become increasingly popular among political scientists. One of the problems of using surveys (of any sort) to estimate party positions is that respondents can be influenced by their subjective political views. As a consequence, experts may give biased responses, and such (ideological) bias may affect certain parties more than others. In this paper, we use the latest expert survey of Benoit and Laver (2006) to unfold the ideal points of the respondents to the survey. By employing the estimated ideal points, we show that in almost 16 percent of the cases analyzed, there is evidence of an ideological bias in the experts' placements of parties along the left-right dimension, especially among right-wing parties (but not necessarily extreme-right parties). We examine two methods designed to generate less biased estimates. The first one is directly based on a regression technique, while the second is based on the negligibility of ideological bias in experts' answers to more specific policy questions. The paper concludes by examining the consequences of these findings for empirical research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]