The 2005 Federal Election in Germany 2005 – an Analysis Sketching an Integrative Model to Explain Voting Behaviour.

Despite the existence of various significant theories, finding one reliable way of analysing election remains difficult. The short-term impacts of election have gained more importance for voting behaviour, while socio-structural classes have become differentiated even further and party identification has become weaker. In contrast, the accuracy of statistical data from election polls and their coverage in the media suggested a high quality of prognosis. The federal election in Germany 2005 were a showcase for that. According to the author, psephology lacks a systematic combination of possible motives for voting behaviour. This hampers the interpretation of statistical data, because there is no comprehensive frame which restrains an overor under-emphasis of single factors. In his article he outlines a research perspective that can contribute to ease this lack of systematic in psephology. His aim is to present a theoretical frame that brings together profitable results of psephology and provides new impulses for developing theories of voting behaviour. Only a combination of single approaches and thus the resulting formulation of an integrative theory – the main thesis of his article – is able to comprehend voting behaviour in its entirety and to accomplish a systematic weighting of single influence factors. A first test for this thesis and the outlined integrative model is the analysis of the German federal election of 2005