Many studies, especially from the US and the UK, have shown that at elections the people with whom we discuss politics in our everyday lives influence how we vote. The paper addresses two aspects of discussant influence on vote choice that are not well understood: the role of party systems as institutional contexts and the relationship between social pressure and information sharing as mechanisms of influence. It argues that in cleavage-based multiparty systems like those of Western Europe, discussant influence at elections occurs in two stages. First, 
discussants place social pressure on voters to opt for parties from the same ideological camp. Secondly, by providing useful information, discussants influence which parties voters eventually pick out of these restricted choice sets. These assumptions are tested using a panel survey conducted by the 2009 German Longitudinal Election Study (GLES).

Rüdiger Schmitt-Beck is Professor of Political Sociology at the University of Mannheim and Director of the Mannheim Centre for European Social Research (MZES). He is is one of the principal investigators of the /German Longitudinal Election Study/ and chairperson of the German Society for Electoral Studies. He has previously held a chair at the University Duisburg-Essen and was Scientific Director at the Centre of Survey Research and Methodology (ZUMA). His main research interests are in the field of political communication and voting behaviour. 

Lunch will be provided at the seminar after the Q&A session.