Welcome

… to my website.

I am assistant professor for political science research methods at Chemnitz University of Technology, where I lead an Emmy Noether Research Group on “Polarization through and in referendums: mapping polarization within and beyond the party system.” I am also the recipient of an ERC Starting Grant for my project “Residential mobility and the realignment of electoral politics in established democracies (RESPOL).” Currently, I am one of three co-speakers of the German Political Science Association’s (DVPW) section for political methodology.

Previously, I was a research fellow at the Chair for Political Sociology of Germany at Freie Universität Berlin and in the summer term of 2020, I served as interim professor at the Center for Data and Methods at Universität Konstanz. I hold a PhD in Governance from the Hertie School of Governance, Berlin, an MSc in Political Science and Political Economy from the London School of Economics and Political Science and a BA in Political Science from Freie Universität Berlin.

My areas of research are in political behavior and applied quantitative methods. I am interested in rightwing populism, polarisation, direct democracy, turnout, youths in politics, election forecasting, economic voting, and electoral studies more broadly. My work has been published or is forthcoming in the American Political Science Review, Journal of Politics, Political Science Research and Methods, Politische Vierteljahresschrift, and West European Politics among others.

I am also a founding member and former board member of CorrelAid, a data science non-profit. From 2012 to 2013 I worked as parliamentary aide in the German Bundestag. I occasionally post about political science, politics, data analysis and sometimes football using the handle @aleininger.

News

2024-12-05 New grant: “Elite Affective Polarization in Israel and Germany” (joint project with Lior Sheffer, Tel Aviv University) will be funded through a Nexus grant by the German Israeli Foundation (GIF)

2024-09-05 New grant: “Residential mobility and the realignment of electoral politics in established democracies (RESPOL)” will be funded through a Starting Grant by the European Research Council (ERC)

2024-08-03 New publication: “Can individual MPs damage their party’s brand? Quasi-experimental evidence from a public procurement corruption scandal” in The Journal of Politics

2024-04-19 New publication: “Voter expectations in district elections without polls. The role of national polls and previous district results” in Public Opinion Quarterly

2024-02-23 New publication: “Coming of voting age. Evidence from a natural experiment on the effects of electoral eligibility” in Electoral Studies

Contact

Chemnitz University of Technology
Assistant Professorship Political Science Research Methods
09126 Chemnitz, Germany
arndt.leininger@phil.tu-chemnitz.de