This study advances our understanding of voter behavior in the digital era and underscores the importance of online search as a critical channel for political learning.

✅ However, this informational gap narrows when the two major parties form a grand coalition.

Together, these results suggest voters act as “cognitive misers,” strategically focusing their attention on parties with the greatest informational deficits.

✅ Programmatic change (e.g., ideological rebranding) further increases information-seeking, especially for major, established opposition parties.
✅ Voters also seek more information about established opposition parties the longer those parties have been out of power.

🔍 Key findings:
✅ Voters search significantly more for political information in proximity to national election campaigns. But their behavior is more nuanced than just timing:
✅ Opposition parties attract more search interest than governing parties.

Using two decades of Google search data from major parties across 11 democracies, I investigate how voters actively seek out political information, and how a party’s incumbency status and programmatic shifts shape this behavior.

(5/5)
This work contributes to ongoing debates about gender, voter behavior, and political representation.

(4/n)
💡 Our findings highlight yet another barrier for women in politics: while flexibility is often necessary in volatile electoral environments, women are held to stricter standards of consistency than men.

(3/n)
✅ Men face limited penalty for similar position changes—and may even be rewarded in some cases.
✅ Interestingly, liberal respondents punish women more than conservatives do, suggesting gendered double standards cut across ideology.

(2/n)
✅ Women candidates face greater backlash than men for repositioning.
✅ The penalties are strongest when women shift in anti-women directions (e.g., on abortion or childcare).

(1/n) 🔑 Our central question: Are women punished more than men when they change their policy positions?

Using a conjoint survey experiment in the U.S., we find that:

(7/7) This is still work in progress. Feedback is more than welcome!

(6/n) This reveals a strategic recalibration: tempering moral appeals to govern effectively, while maintaining loyalty from their base through stronger issue focus.

The broader implication: parties can moderate how they speak without abandoning what they stand for.

(4/n) Findings:
✅ Green parties are systematic “moralizers” of the environment in their manifestos, especially compared to right-wing parties.
✅ After joining government in 2021, the German Greens significantly reduced moral rhetoric on environmental issues.