Questioning the Obvious: Political Events and Public Opinion on the Government’s Standing

It is well-known that events influence the standing of the governing parties. Still, important questions remain unanswered: Which characteristics are necessary for an event to have an impact? Why should voters care about events and which role does the mass media play? How are other influences on government popularity affected by the occurrence of events? To answer these questions a model of German government popularity containing the economic situation and events, selected by addressed criteria, will be advanced and tested by means of time-series regression. The results show that events have an impact on government popularity and are able to repress real-world influences. This effect is rather short-lived and does not cover all events which are normally perceived as influential. It is commonly accepted that events such as wars or natural disasters have an effect on the popularity of political parties. This claim is said to be especially true for parties in power since they can demonstrate their competence in handling unpredictable events by effectively managing a crisis caused by an event. Therefore, scholars often point to events occurring right before elec-tions in order to explain election results (e.g., Norpoth, 1994; Roth & Jung, 2002). For instance the Thatcher government’s response to the 1982 Falkland All correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Evelyn Bytzek, University of Frankfurt