A Puzzle during the 2002 Election Year

In contrast to the 1998 election year, the 2002 federal election campaign was marked by two clear shifts in popular opinion. At the start of the year, at about the time when Edmund Stoiber was nominated as the Christian Democrats' candidate for chancellor, the CDU/CSU surged ahead of the Social Democrats in terms of voting intentions (party vote), a lead which it continued to expand in practically all of the months to come. Those persons identified via the strength-of-personality scale as opinion leaders contributed significantly to this shift in the population’s political preferences.

As had been the case in the 1990 and 1994 elections, the shift in popular opinion was preceded by a political reorientation among opinion leaders. Even before late 2001 and early 2002, the Christian Democrats were already leading the Social Democrats among opinion leaders: Within only one month’s time, from early December 2001 to early January 2002, the share of opinion leaders who supported the CDU/CSU increased from 33 to 41 percent (Allensbach Archives, IfD Surveys 7014 and 7016). There was no similar shift in party preference among the remaining population at the time. In fact, it was not until the spring of 2002 that the population followed suit and shifted in the same direction as opinion leaders.

Although the mood swing in favor of the Christian Democrats in the spring of 2002 conformed to the pattern found in previous election campaigns, the second opinion swing observed among the population in late August/early September 2002 completely broke the mold: within a few weeks' time, the Christian Democrats lost their seemingly unbeatable lead over the Social Democrats. This shift in party strength and the Social Democrats' quick race to catch up with the Christian Democrats was first detected among the broad majority of the population in the last week of August and only about two weeks later among opinion leaders—which can be viewed as a rather long interval, given the dramatic developments at this point in the campaign.