🚨 8 days left to apply! @svenhegewald.bsky.social and I a are happy to answer questions of prospective applicants.

I can highly recommend this position! Come join us in HH and feel free to contact me if you have questions about the team, university or Arndt

For those claiming bluesky is equally bad. When I still posted on X, I was called a f*ggot, goat f*cker, told to go back where I am from, that I‘d be the first to be deported on nearly all tweets that generated some reach. If you think bluesky and X feel the same, it‘s a sign of your privilege.

Vielleicht hat die Stärke der AfD ja gar nichts mit der Zahl der Geflüchteten zu tun? Vielleicht war es falsch zu versuchen AfD Wähler:innen mit immer restriktiveren Maßnahmen zurückzugewinnen? Vielleicht hat man so die AfD normalisiert und ihr zu einer neuen Kernwählerschaft verholfen? Vielleicht.

T-14 days until the Hungarian election. 🇭🇺🗳️ In this thread, I discuss Magyar's prospects of success in restoring (liberal) democracy (if he wins) and will tell you he's not the saviour you might think he is (but that he’s still good enough for now). 🧵 1/

The first Tesla after two minutes of Amsterdam bicycle traffic

Colleagues, @svenhegewald.bsky.social and I are looking for a student assistant (30-40h/month, remote work possible) in my ERC project RESPOL @politikuhh.bsky.social @uni-hamburg.de. Please let your most talented students know. 😀🙏

Together with Arndt, I will also be moving to @uni-hamburg.de and I'm just as stoked! At the same time, I'm saying goodbye and thank you to TU Chemnitz, to all the colleagues who helped me get through the past three years (from feedback on my research to many travel expense forms) and to this city:

What Arndt is saying and a big thank you to Lina for her great work on this in the last years:

We (@felixgruenewald.bsky.social and our RA Lina Zündorf) have once again updated our encyclopedia of polarization with some great new examples of polarization research and documentation of further measures. You can find the new entries on polarization.wiki and some examples listed below:

"Centrism is not in and of itself illegitimate. But its defenders should ask themselves hard questions about what it can possibly mean in 2026. A reflexive position in the middle – for the middle must by definition be reasonable – makes little sense in a completely asymmetrical political landscape."

We (@aleininger.bsky.social & our RA Lina Zündorf) have once again updated our encyclopedia of polarization with some great new examples of polarization research. You can find the new entries on polarization.wiki or listed below:

This 👇 is not only a new, but also my first publication! 🎉 @asheinze.bsky.social and I investigate why #youngpeople support the AfD in eastern Germany. Read it here (#openaccess): www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

The vast majority of these policies mean nothing to voters. They mean so little that we can get voters to change their opinions by telling them their party supports/rejects the policy. They mean so little that they will respond differently the next time you ask them. We have data establishing this.

Er sagt ja, wir sollen unsere Töchter fragen. Meine stand gestern in der ersten Reihe und hat gegen ihn demonstriert. Um sie herum viele viele weitere junge Frauen.

A professor is threatened online, has his flight canceled mysteriously, and this is all his university has to say: “Rutgers University is committed to providing a secure environment (...) where all members of our community can share their opinions without fear of intimidation or harassment,

As long as the far right shapes public opinion, and mainstream parties follow public opinion, the far right dominates politics, whether in government or not.

Viele, die das Glück hatten mit Online-Subkulturen noch nie in Kontakt gekommen zu sein, können sich nicht vorstellen wie das aussieht. Ihr müsst euch von d Idee verabschieden, d da eine konsistente, ordentliche Ideologie u ein klares, strategisches Motiv hinter Handlungen steht. Das ist es nicht.

We have once again updated our encyclopedia of polarisation and I will take it as an opportunity to introduce some of the features again. On ❄️ polarization.wiki you can find descriptions, formulas, data and applications of the most common measurements of political polarization.

This obsession is with “young men turning to the right” is everything that is wrong with the discussion about the far right. It is not just an inadequate read of what is happening, and a bias towards the male norm, but it also normalizes the far right and obscures support for inclusive politics. 🧵

A question that I haven't heard a good answer to: if cutting migration by a third in a year hasn't changed the narrative on it at all - what would make you think cutting it by another third (or half] would?

(Not) just to bump my paper back into your feeds: I believe this to be a very important point, it is not only about if and how strongly we dislike other groups, but also why. There are valid reasons to feel negative or be emotional, if that group promotes policies that are harmful to you or others.

Interesting

Here we go 🍎 as my first paper got published at WEP this week! I show that political out-groups are perceived to be more homogeneous and that this is driving negative feelings and (un)willingness to vote for the other group. It is open access, so you can give it a read here: doi.org/10.1080/0140...

Very happy and proud to see @felixgruenewald.bsky.social 's paper "‘Seen one, seen ‘em all’: political outgroup homogeneity and negative affect" in print @wepsocial.bsky.social. One of the first outputs of our @dfg.de funded project on polarization. Check it out, it's #openaccess

„… ob das Delikt den Demokratieschaden rechtfertigt.“ Ich würde denken, dass es der Demokratie auch schadet, wenn der Justiz hier eine politische Motivation unterstellt wird, ohne Belege dafür zu haben. Genau das machen Trump, Höcke und andere autoritäre Kräfte. Schwierige Aussage ohne Hinweise.

I'm rereading the transcripts of our interviews with people talking about their life satisfaction. I am again struck by how pathetic our little 0-10 scales are at capturing what they're saying. Here's a retired lady telling my assistant what it's like having a son with paranoid schizophrenia.

Many people rightly point to the core role that mainstream right parties play for defending liberal democracy against the far-right threat. However, solely focusing on the centre-right ignores the errors that leftwing parties have committed that have empowered the far right. A few thoughts …

Il faut regarder en face ces images. Par un abus de pouvoir & au mépris d'une décision de justice, l'administration Trump a expulsé au Salvador (régime autoritaire) 238 hommes. Sans preuve, ni procès. Voués à un « camp de travail », ils ont été rasés de force & déshumanisés. Devant les caméras.

Merz: "Für Menschen, die arbeiten können und wiederholt zumutbare Arbeit verweigern, wird ein vollständiger Leistungsentzug vorgenommen." Die zumutbare Arbeit:

Do we systematically prefer educated candidates? Or do educational groups select in ways that reward their own? This article by @turnbulldugarte.com and I suggests the answers are yes, and yes - but only for the graduate group. Huge thanks to all who shared their data with us!

Der Korken aus der Flasche: Was hat den Höhenflug der Linken ausgelöst? Ein 🧵dazu, warum der Einfluss der Brandmauerdebatte selbst und der Rede von Heidi Reichinnek auf den Wahlerfolg der Linken über-, und das Überschreiten der 5%-Hürde in Umfragen unterschätzt wird. (1/xx)

Was ist das für eine absurde Frage, SRF? Seit 1949 war die SPD als zweitstärkste Partei fast 40 Jahre in der Opposition, auch die Union über 20. Krass, wie tief sich rechtspopulistische Narrative in euren Köpfen festgesetzt haben. www.srf.ch/news/interna...

What we see is not first-time voters being more left-wing than in 2021. 49% of youths voting for SPD/Greens/Linke in 2025 vs 46% in 2021. What we see is that most progressive youths are choosing Linke instead of SPD and Greens now.

The Left (Die Linke) receives a spectacular result among the very young German voters:

Das entlarvendste an dieser Rede ist die Verwendung des Begriffs "Judenfahnen" (gemeint ist die Flagge Israels). Dieser Mann ist mit hoher Wahrscheinlichkeit der nächste Bundeskanzler.

“Die Debatte zur Migrationspolitik hält unvermindert an“ = wir haben Leute wieder nur zur Migrationspolitik befragt

Das Einreißen der Brandmauer gegenüber der AfD ist das eine. Das andere ist, dass sich die CDU selbst wie eine rechtspopulistische Partei aufführt, wenn Sie einen rassistisch motivierten Antrag mit rechtswidrigen Forderungen einbringt und sich dabei auf einen vermeintlichen Volkswillen beruft.

Die Resignation der Gegner des Rechtsextremismus kommt vor allem auch daher, dass die nominell linken Parteien sich seit Jahren in Politik und Rhetorik bei Flucht und Migration nach rechts bewegen. Die radikale Rechte wird legitimiert und normalisiert während progressiver Protest delegitimiert wird.

If you're sitting at home during the holidays and wondering "what is new on affective polarization?", you can head over to polarization.wiki where we updated our collection of affective polarization literature with some new papers. Plus: it's snowing! cc: @aleininger.bsky.social

After months of preparation, we are finally ready to share polarization.wiki, our encyclopedia of political polarization Here, you'll find everything you need to know about the most common measures of polarization: from definitions to usage & R-scripts. Let me show you: @aleininger.bsky.social