condition their vote for the mayor on the result of the last council election? We collected a unique data set for Germany in … town council election?; (2) Does this partisan identity influence in ensuing higher level elections?; and (3) Do voters … which we link election results for different political institutions at the municipal level. To identify causal effects, we …

election outcomes based on municipal level data for Germany. We find that the party of the mayor can receive a bonus of 4 … interested in: Does the partisan identity of the mayor influence the voter's decision in the subsequent town council election … the mayor on the result of the last council election? We rely on a regression discontinuity design focusing on close …

democratic experience and strong party ties. Utilizing the 1990 German Unification Election Study, I examine a natural experiment …

) election. For this purpose, the party positions on 31 topical issues are compared with the results of recent public opinion …-democratic SPD are ranked only 27th and 22nd, respectively, being least representative among the four parties in the 2013 Bundestag … coin, meaning that the 2013 Bundestag is practically unrelated to public opinion. …