Welcome

… to my website.

I am an 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).”

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, polarization, direct democracy, turnout, youths in politics, election forecasting, economic voting, and electoral studies more broadly. My work has been published 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

2025-04-30 New publication: “Citizen Forecasting in a Mixed Electoral System. The 2021 German federal election as a test case” (with ) new online first in International Journal of Forecasting

2025-04-01 New location: I will spend the summer term as a Junior Fellow at the Alfried Krupp Institute for Advanced Study in Greifswald and be on leave from my assistant professorship in Chemnitz.

2025-03-25 New special issue: “Unequal Participation Among Youth and Immigrants: Analyzing Political Attitudes and Behavior in Societal Subgroups” (co-edited with Sabrina Mayer, University of Bamberg) appeared in Politics and Governance

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)

Contact

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