Predicting current voting intentions by Big Five personality domains, facets, and nuances – A random forest analysis approach in a German sample

To understand what was driving individual differences in voting intentions in a large German sample, we investigated the predictability of voting intentions from the Big Five personality domains, facets, and nuances, thereby tackling shortcomings of previous studies. Using random forest analyses in a dataset of N = 4,286 individuals (46.01% men), separate models were trained to predict intentions to 1) not vote versus to vote, 2) vote for a specific party, and 3) vote for a left- versus right-from-the-center party from either the Big Five personality domains, facets, or nuances (represented by individual items). Except for intentions to not vote versus to vote, balanced accuracies to predict voting intentions marginally exceeded those achieved by a baseline learner always predicting the majority class. Using nuances over facets and domains slightly increased balanced accuracies. Results indicate that additional variables should be considered to accurately predict voting intentions, at least in German samples.

O Protagonismo do PMDB na Política Brasileira: Uma Análise Comparativa das Eleições de 1994 a 2018

With the promulgation of a new Federal Constitution in 1988, the Brazilian political-institutional arrangement was established based on a process of reconstructing representative democracy. With this change, the present work sought to analyze the role of PMDB in Brazilian politics during the electoral period of 1994 and 2018. PMDB was the pivotal party in the process of redemocratization in Brazil, as well as the greatest ally to have been sought by the government in studied period. However, due to its characterization as a center party and lack of an ideology consistent with the current demands of the population, the PMDB lost a significant space within the Brazilian Legislative, being neither part of the allied base nor of the opposition of the current Bolsonaro government, making with its protagonism in check.

UMP – From Party of Power to Opposition: Crisis of French Right

The article considers the current status of one of the leading French political parties - Union pour Movement Populaire (UMP). The author deals with the causes of organizational, conceptual and political crisis of this right-center party after failure of its leader N. Sarkozy at the presidential elections of 2012. Now the party founds itself in opposition. The diverse spectrum of the ideological and political streams that are united under the flag of this party is demonstrated and the possible ways of UNM’s evolution are analyzed.

African Resistance and Center Party Recalcitrance in the Reichstag Colonial Debates of 1905/06

On May 26, 1906, as German chancellor Bernhard von Bülow rested on the North Sea coast recuperating from a recent physical collapse, his administration suffered a resounding triple defeat in the Reichstag at the hands of his hitherto indispensable Catholic political partners in the Center party. In the course of a single day, the Centrists rejected the military justification for a railroad in wartorn Southwest Africa, ruled out further government compensation for settler losses in the Herero and Nama Uprisings, and then blocked the elevation of the Colonial Department of the Foreign Office to the status of an independent imperial office. Moreover, the intense interest of Kaiser Wilhelm II in the passage of each of these colonial measures rendered the Center's decisive contribution to the rout acutely embarrassing for the chancellor. Faced seven months later with a similar Centrist refusal to authorize more than twenty of the latest twenty-nine million marks toward suppression of the Nama, Bülow would then dissolve the Reichstag, putting a definitive end to nearly a decade of government-Center parliamentary cooperation.