Political Attitudes of First-Time Voters 2002

Due to the fact that the existing discussions referring to the planned decrease of voting age from 18 to 16 this topic should catch some attention.->In this empirical study on the occasion of the parliamentary election in Austria 2006 the attention was drawn to the young voters who have an higher education, a higher interest in politics and in correlation to that a more intense political media consumption.->The study was conducted on the one hand with the browser game www.powerofpolitics.com and on the other hand with the internet presence of the daily newspaper Der Standard.The major issue was the Ann-Arbor-Model developed by Campbell et. al. on the University of Michigan in the 1950s.

As a result of that model voting behaviour concurs with political-institutional, social-economical and psychological factors. The natural centre always builds a more or less strong party identification, which colours virtually every other possible factor. Further more the study was searching for the real potential of young voters when it comes to relate different party statements to the suitable party.