Electoral Behaviour and Public Opinion in a Changing World

Western Democracy may have never faced a greater threat since World War II than it has since Trump’s return to the White House. His electoral victory, as well as the electoral victories of parties of the radical right in Europe and Latin America, highlights the importance of understanding electoral behaviour and the dynamics of public opinion. At the same time, it puts many apparent certainties into question. The Standing Group on Public Opinion and Voting Behaviour therefore proposes a section for the ECPR General Conference 2026, to bring together scholars from a variety of countries at all levels of their academic careers, to present and debate important results on voter turnout, the background and motives of vote choices, and drivers of changes in public opinions on crucial issues such as immigration, climate change or European integration. The section is designed as an open one to all subfields of public opinion and electoral research, with a focus on the most important topics and issues, without giving priority to any narrow subfield. It thereby aims to maximise its contribution to the growth of knowledge in the areas covered by the standing group. Possible topics of panels and papers are: fundamental studies on stability or change in the influence of long-term factors, such as cleavages and partisan attachments; ideological and affective polarisation between citizens and partisans; the multiple roles of candidates in changing campaigns; the dynamics of opinions in a changing informational environment, with a particular attention to the new means of digital communications (known as social media) and to the consequences of misinformation campaigns; misperceptions, their persistence and possibilities of correction, and their political consequences; the political inclusion disadvantaged social groups, as well as the changing political role of gender and ethnic identities. Potential data sources are the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems, the European Election Studies, the European Social Survey programme, and other comparative surveys, but certainly also various national election studies or special-purpose opinion polls. The section invites papers of all theoretical and methodological orientations, but in particular welcomes those that involve novel theories and innovative methodological tools, and also that critically examine widely accepted results and propositions. Paper proposals that address general questions from a comparative perspective are given priority over those that involve single-countries studies on narrower topics.