Opinion polls are a highly prominent feature in today's reporting on election campaigns. But the relationship between journalists and opinion polls in the U.S. and Germany has been described as a rivalry in the past. This study presents results of two surveys that were carried out among American...

This paper analyzes the occurrence of political budget cycles in 604 West German cities between 1975 and 2007. Due to the idiosyncratic timing of state and local elections, the budgetary changes before elections at two tiers of the federalist government can be separately estimated and can also...