Ivo Bantel
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ivobantel.bsky.social
Ivo Bantel
@ivobantel.bsky.social
600 followers 250 following 56 posts
Head of Research & Data @POLITICOEurope ・polarization, extremism, computational social science, text-as-data・PhD from University of Zurich, previously @Harvard Gov't, @Oxford DPIR & @University of Bremen (he/him)
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Reposted by Ivo Bantel
wepsocial.bsky.social
💥Online first:

"Communicating a common front: mainstream party rhetoric and affective polarisation towards the radical right"

by @markuskollberg.bsky.social & @ivobantel.bsky.social

doi.org/10.1080/0140...
Abstract of the article "Communicating a common front: mainstream party rhetoric and affective polarisation towards the radical right" by Markus Kollberg and Ivo Bantel. Published online first in West European Politics. Figure 1, displaying the means of elite-level negative rhetoric for target and origin parties (re-scaled to 0-10) and affective polarisation scores in the public. Figure 4, displaying the means of skalometer outcome across treatment conditions. Figure 5, displaying the means of feeling thermometer outcome across treatment conditions.
September 8, 2025 at 9:20 AM
ivobantel.bsky.social
Very happy to see our new paper out in WEP.

We document that rhetorically countering the Radical Right requires mainstream parties to form a common front to be effective.

Full paper (open access): www.tandfonline.com/doi/epdf/10....

Highlights in the thread below.
markuskollberg.bsky.social Markus Kollberg @markuskollberg.bsky.social · Sep 3
Returning from vacation and looking for a late summer read? @ivobantel.bsky.social and I got you covered!

In our new @wepsocial.bsky.social paper, we assess how mainstream parties rhetorically create an affect-based "common front" against the radical right.

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
September 3, 2025 at 11:41 AM
ivobantel.bsky.social
Bargaining with authoritarians is doomed to fail. Excellent piece by @dziblatt.bsky.social and must read.
August 29, 2025 at 7:45 AM
ivobantel.bsky.social
Important finding for Social Democratic parties.

Danish Social Democrats – often used as an example why Social Democratic parties should adopt anti-immigrant positions for electoral success! – could have won policy support for a pro-immigrant platform if their messaging were framed in moral terms.
kristinabsimonsen.bsky.social Kristina Bakkær Simonsen @kristinabsimonsen.bsky.social · Aug 6
Now in an issue @psrm.bsky.social: I show that the 🇩🇰 Social Democrats could have won policy support for a pro-immigrant platform if their messaging were framed in moral terms. Findings provide a central corrective to the popular notion that the Social Democrats were destined to go anti-immigrant 👇🏻
psrm.bsky.social Political Science Research and Methods @psrm.bsky.social · Sep 24
👅Can moral language boost pro-immigrant messages and be as effective as anti-immigrant messages?

➡️ @kristinabsimonsen.bsky.social shows that pro-immigrant actors are not always bound to lose against the anti-immigrant side www.cambridge.org/core/journal... #FirstView #OpenAccess
August 6, 2025 at 3:47 PM
ivobantel.bsky.social
juliusk.bsky.social Julius Kölzer @juliusk.bsky.social · Apr 11
center-right parties accommodating the radical right
April 11, 2025 at 9:20 AM
ivobantel.bsky.social
New paper by Markus Kollberg in @psrm.bsky.social.

Mainstream populism doesn't work (i.e. doesn't influence voter evaluations of parties)!

Might also be relevant for some current political actors actors.
markuskollberg.bsky.social Markus Kollberg @markuskollberg.bsky.social · Mar 25
Does Mainstream Populism Work❓

I answer this question in a new paper officially out at @psrm.bsky.social❗

Check out the paper here: doi.org/10.1017/psrm...

Key take-aways in the thread below 🧵⬇️:
March 27, 2025 at 9:14 AM
Reposted by Ivo Bantel
tabouchadi.bsky.social
Some thoughts and pointers on the upcoming German elections on Sunday. Nearly all polling institutes have released final polls in the last days that show a very similar picture. It is nearly certain that the CDU/CSU will come out on top and Friedrich Merz is going to be the next Chancellor. 1/
February 21, 2025 at 10:33 AM
Reposted by Ivo Bantel
andreassieber.bsky.social
🧵1/X
As #Trump takes office today, @ivobantel.bsky.social and I comment for the @the-independent.com how Trump has radicalised and is a threat to #climate action and #democracy - why it's in the interest of other governments to collaborate and call his bluffs.

www.independent.co.uk/voices/trump...
Trump’s second term puts democracy and climate in peril
As Trump’s second term as US president looms, the world braces for a radical shift in democratic norms and climate action. But there is an urgent need for resistance, write climate expert Andreas Sieb...
www.independent.co.uk
January 20, 2025 at 11:08 AM
ivobantel.bsky.social
New study by @nickbichay.bsky.social

Radical-Right parties participating in elections disenchant and demobilize voters, endangering (not "correcting") democracy!

RR participation in elections is associated with lower(!) turnout.

But don't RR parties bring non-voters to the ballots? Not really.
A two-panel figure illustrating the conditional effect of radical-right parties on voter turnout. The left panel, titled "Satisfaction w/ Democracy," shows two data points: 1. For non-radical-right party supporters, the effect is slightly negative (below zero) with a small error bar. 2. For radical-right party supporters, the effect is strongly positive (above zero) with a larger error bar, indicating greater variability. The right panel, titled "Trust in Politicians," also shows two data points: 1. For non-radical-right party supporters, the effect is negative (below zero) with a small error bar. 2. For radical-right party supporters, the effect is moderately positive (above zero) with a moderate error bar. Both panels share the y-axis labeled "Change_After_Radical-Right_Contestation," centered around zero. Error bars in both panels represent confidence intervals.
December 5, 2024 at 9:57 AM
Reposted by Ivo Bantel
tagliapietra.bsky.social
Europe is at a juncture where political resistance to decarbonisation is mounting and where budgetary means to buy off consent are becoming scarce, at both EU and national levels. To get the Green Deal done, a new investment strategy is needed

www.bruegel.org/policy-brief...
An investment strategy to keep the European Green Deal on track
In this Policy Brief, we assess the investment needed to achieve the 2030 climate goal and climate neutrality by 2050
www.bruegel.org
December 4, 2024 at 10:53 AM
ivobantel.bsky.social
A good explainer of the surprising first round of Romanian Presidential Elections (1st round) and, importantly, the implications.
November 30, 2024 at 10:23 PM
Reposted by Ivo Bantel
drewharwell.com
Yes, X demotes link posts; been that way for a while www.mediaite.com/news/elon-mu...

Huge pain for news orgs. Source told me NYT's X traffic plunged 50% in 1 month www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2...

X also delays sites Elon dislikes, as we first reported www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2...
Elon Musk Admits X is Throttling Links — Effectively Limiting People From Reading News
Musk confirmed that posts containing links are deprioritized, renewing criticism that the platform is restricting access to external sources of information.
www.mediaite.com
November 25, 2024 at 3:56 PM
Reposted by Ivo Bantel
m-b-petersen.bsky.social
The victory march of democracy has ended

What can we as researchers do?

In the Scandinavian countries, a particular tool is available: Democracy & Power Studies.

The Danish government appointed me as director of such a study. We started our work this year.

A 🧵 on what we do & how we do it

1/8
November 23, 2024 at 3:03 PM
Reposted by Ivo Bantel
m-b-petersen.bsky.social
A mapping of how Bluesky is becoming the new Scientific Twitter

mikeyoungacademy.dk/bluesky-is-e...
Bluesky is emerging as the new platform for science - Mike Young Academy
Scientific Twitter is about to find its true successor. And it is not X. This, our latest release, shows that the Bluesky network of scientists is growing — and growing.
mikeyoungacademy.dk
November 20, 2024 at 5:28 AM
ivobantel.bsky.social
Protests against the far-right reduce far-right voting through media exposure (here: study in France). A similar effect was likely the reason why AfD polled lower during/after large German anti-AfD protests.
owasow.bsky.social Omar Wasow @owasow.bsky.social · Nov 16
New study looks at protests against far right in 2002 French elections. Finds “larger protests reduced number of votes for Le Pen and abstention, while increasing number of votes for the incumbent president, Chirac.” Also finds “effect worked
through media exposure.” nicolas-lagios.com/files/fn.pdf
Media, Spillovers, and Social Norms: The Electoral Impact of Anti-Far Right Protests in the 2002 French Election* Short title: Anti-Far Right Protests By Nicolas Lagios†, Pierre-Guillaume Méon‡, Ilan Tojerow§ We study the electoral impact of protesting against the far right by investigating the demonstrations held during the 2002 French presidential elections against far-right candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen. Instrumenting rally attendance with rainfall while factoring in that some municipalities never host protests, we find that larger protests reduced the number of votes for Le Pen and abstention, while increasing the number of votes for the incumbent president, Jacques Chirac. We find that the effect spread out beyond the municipalities that hosted protests and worked through media exposure. Using survey data, we show that protests reduced support for the policies advocated by Le Pen. Moreover, the positive effect on voting for Chirac resulted from right-wing voters switching from Le Pen to Chirac and left-wing voters not casting a blank ballot, implying that some voters voted expressively. Finally, we show that protests reduced the social desirability of voting for Le Pen. The figure reports the location and the size of the protests held on May 1, 2002, against Jean-Marie Le Pen. The figure shows a map of France with scattered dots across the country that vary in size in proportion to the size of the protest events. Table 2 shows the Baseline Results for The Impact of Protests on Voting Outcomes. Each column is devoted to a different electoral outcome: Specifically, the vote share of Jean-Marie Le Pen, the vote share of Jacques Chirac, and the share of abstentions and blank and invalid ballots. larger protests reduced the far-right candidate’s vote share. More precisely, a 0.1 percentage point increase in the share of the population protesting in a municipality decreased by 2.2 percentage points the vote share of Jean-Marie Le Pen in that municipality. In Column (2), the dependent variable is the vote share for Jacques Chirac. Here, the number of participants exhibits a positive coefficient that is statistically significant at the five- percent level in all specifications. Accordingly, a larger number of participants in the May 1 protests increased the share and the number of voters who cast a ballot for the right of centre candidate. The magnitude of the effect is again substantial without being implausibly large: A 0.1 percentage point increase in the share of the population protesting in a municipality resulted in a 4.5 percentage points increase in Jacques Chirac’s vote share. This means that in the absence of protests, Jacques Chirac would have lost 2.3 points in the second round. Finally, Column (3) suggests that protests also affected the share of abstentions and blank and invalid ballots. The number of participants exhibits a negative coefficient statistically significant at the five-percent level, implying that a 0.1 percentage point increase in the share of the population protesting reduced the share of abstentions and blank and invalid ballots by 2.3 percentage points. In the absence of protests, the share of abstentions and blank and invalid ballots would have therefore been 0.8 point higher. Figure 4 reports the estimated marginal effect of the number of participants on the agreement of respondents with the policies sponsored by Jean-Marie Le Pen: immigration, security, traditional values, criticism of the political class, the abolition of the income tax, and an exit of France from the EU. The marginal effect is always negative and statistically significant at standard levels. We also looked at two more specific measures of the position of respondents on immigration, which was the theme on which Jean-Marie Le Pen was the most salient. Specifically, respondents were asked their level of agreement with the following two statements: “there are too many immigrants” and “immigrants enrich a culture”. Here, Jean-Marie Le Pen was not explicitly mentioned. We observe that respondents in municipalities that experienced larger protests were less likely to agree with the statement that there are too many immigrants and more likely to agree with the statement that immigrants enrich a culture. This series of findings is consistent with the models of Lohmann (1994) and Battaglini (2017) that argue that protests can raise public awareness around the issues at stake. Larger protests against Jean-Marie Le Pen might have reduced voters’ support for his policies by signalling the negative issues associated with those policies, thereby decreasing the incentive to vote for the far-right candidate. Again, we cannot rule out that protests triggered a social desirability bias on specific policies even if an exit from the EU or a critique of the political class were sponsored by other candidates unrelated to and less stigmatized than Jean-Marie Le Pen. In any case, we return to social desirability in Section 7.3.
November 18, 2024 at 4:58 PM
ivobantel.bsky.social
FDP plante Bruch der Ampel unter der Bezeichnung der Operation für die Befreiung der Normandie von Nazi-Deutschland! Verantwortungsloses Verhalten kann zusätzlich auch noch geschichtsvergessen und geschmacklos par excellence sein. #DDayGate
November 16, 2024 at 7:25 PM
Reposted by Ivo Bantel
bettikohlrausch.bsky.social
Das Gender Pay Gap beträgt in diesem Jahr unverändert 18%. Der Gender Pay-Gap ist auch im europäischen Vergleich sehr hoch und reflektiert Arbeitsmarktstrukturen, die Frauen systematisch benachteiligt. www.destatis.de/DE/Presse/Pr...
March 5, 2024 at 10:38 AM
ivobantel.bsky.social
High-ranking AfD politicians (including the personal assistant to Alice Weidel, one of the AfD's chairs) met with neo-Nazis and potential funders in November, as @correctiv.org uncovers.

They fund-raised for a big plan: expelling "not assimilated" German citizens and weakening democracy.

1/
Geheimplan gegen Deutschland
Hochrangige AfD-Politiker, Neonazis und finanzstarke Unternehmer planten die Vertreibung von Millionen von Menschen aus Deutschland.
correctiv.org
January 10, 2024 at 10:17 AM
ivobantel.bsky.social
📊 New polling analysis by the POLITICO Research & Analysis Division for the 2024 European Parliament election

🗓 5 months ahead of the EP election Nisa Khan, Rodrigo Gutierrez & I crunched the data and present the latest polling trends.

#EuropeanPolitics #EU2024

1/
January 9, 2024 at 12:02 PM
Reposted by Ivo Bantel
lcadzow.bsky.social
I'm new here – but still occasionally posting about tax gov and international politics!
September 26, 2023 at 10:28 AM
Reposted by Ivo Bantel
kristinakbeck.bsky.social
New to Bluesky 😉 Trying to connect with people who study tropical / cold-water corals 🪸, climate change, ocean acidification, anthropogenic impacts on the marine environment... 🌊
🐋🐬🦈🦭🐟🦀🦑🐙🪼🦞🐚
November 5, 2023 at 2:19 PM
ivobantel.bsky.social
Warum teilen Menschen Verschwörungserzählungen?

Eine großartige Übersicht über einige der Gründe von Pia Lamberty.
pialamberty.bsky.social Pia Lamberty @pialamberty.bsky.social · Dec 30
Auf Social Media sieht man eine Vielzahl von Verschwörungserzählungen, die von unterschiedlichen gesellschaftlichen Milieus geteilt werden. Es gibt verschiedene Gründe, warum Menschen solche Inhalte verbreiten. 🧵
December 30, 2023 at 10:54 AM
ivobantel.bsky.social
Important bluesky update - posts can now be publicly viewed (i.e. without an account), and thus used as a source, e.g. for journalists.
Another reason not to cite X. 😉
A New Look for Bluesky: The Social Butterfly
A new look for Bluesky — the social butterfly — and a public web interface.
blueskyweb.xyz
December 26, 2023 at 10:25 AM
ivobantel.bsky.social
The Dutch elections have implications beyond the Netherlands – but not as you might expect!

The PVV's result provides a stark warning sign, showing the results of the centre-right legitimising and thereby normalising anti-pluralist Radical Right parties!
dziblatt.bsky.social Daniel Ziblatt @dziblatt.bsky.social · Nov 23
A warning for the center right:

As @sldelange.bsky.social puts it, "Before the election, Yeşilgöz [center right] “legitimized Wilders by making immigration a key issue in the campaign,” and opening the door to a coalition with him That’s come back to bite the party."
Wilders’ win sends shudders through Europe
POLITICO’s must-read briefing on what's driving the day in Brussels, by Jakob Hanke Vela.
www.politico.eu
November 23, 2023 at 11:47 AM
ivobantel.bsky.social
Are Millennials worse off than Baby Boomers?

This AJS piece argues: that question & focus on 'average' cohort experiences is misleading or meaningless.

The real story is "rising inequality within cohorts: middle class Millennials are doing better, working class Millennials often doing worse."
robgruijters.bsky.social Rob Gruijters @robgruijters.bsky.social · Nov 14
New in AJS! @zjvanwinkle.bsky.social, Anette Fasang & I investigate a hotly debated question: are Millennials worse off than their parents’ generation, the Baby Boomers? We argue that this is a misleading question. Why? See ⬇️ or read www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...
November 15, 2023 at 2:24 PM