Election Forecasts for the German Federal Election 2025

• Applicants: Professor Thomas Gschwend, Ph.D.; Professor Dr. Simon Munzert; Professor Dr. Lukas Stötzer
• Subject Area: Political Science
• Term: since 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 529544178

Who will be the strongest party in the next Bundestag, and who will become the new chancellor? How will seats be distributed after the reform of the electoral system? Will the traffic light coalition regain a parliamentary majority and continue to govern, or will it be replaced by a center-right or left-wing coalition? Will the Greens again win several nominal districts in urban areas? Such questions will be at the center of interest of news media, political pundits, and election researchers alike. In this research project, we devise a holistic forecasting endeavor in the context of the German Federal Election of 2025 that entails three work packages and not only addresses the forecast itself but also potential consequences of election forecasting practice. In the first work package (WP1), we innovate German Federal Election forecasting models on key dimensions. We suggest extending a dynamic forecasting model of pre-election polling data, which we established in the literature in the past, by integrating it with individual-level survey data from citizens and elites that also speak to district races. Furthermore, we plan to integrate newer developments in conformal inference to calibrate the uncertainty based on past performance more accurately. In the second work package (WP2), we create a database of survey data for scientific election forecasting, implement a rolling cross-section design with citizens, and conduct a survey with local elites. The survey among citizens will be fielded in cooperation with an established survey institute weekly starting several weeks prior to the German Federal Election 2025. By interviewing around 100 respondents per electoral district over the course of the field period, we plan to create a rich sample of respondents that can be used to stabilize local forecasts and inform on local campaign dynamics and their downstream effects on forecasts. In addition, we plan to elicit expectations about the district races from local elites, namely district candidates and journalists, that we recruit months before the election. In the third work package (WP3), we systematically assess the consequences of exposure to election forecasts for political behavior and attitudes. How do voters, political elites (district candidates) and local experts (journalists) understand and make use of scientific election forecasts? And what are the consequences of election forecasts on political behavior and communication? To address these questions, we build on the data collection carried out as part of WP2 and aim to field a set of experiments to study the effect of our election forecasts on recipients´ beliefs, citizens' vote intentions, candidates' positioning and journalists' reporting about the election race. Moreover, we want to investigate how to effectively communicate election forecasts to inform and not to distort consumers' beliefs.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants