Cornelius Erfort

I am a Postdoc at the Witten/Herdecke University, working on the project Election Forecasts for the German Federal Election 2025.

My general interests are in comparative politics and quantitative methods. More specifically, I am working on voter targeting, interest groups, and voting behavior.

In my dissertation, I analyzed how parties use the target and tailor their digital election ads. I was member of the Research Training Group DYNAMICS which is jointly organized by Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and the Hertie School. During my PhD, I visited the LSE Department of Government for one term (2023). I completed my pre-doctoral studies at the Humboldt-Universität, spent a semester at the CIDE in Mexico City (2017) and have a background in mechanical engineering.

I have co-authored work with António Valentim, Jan Stuckatz, Felix Hartmann, Lukas F. Stoetzer, and Heike Klüver.

On this website, you can find more information on my research projects and download a copy of my CV (PDF).

Publications

You can find more details about my research under Research.

Targeting Voters Online: How Parties’ Campaigns Differ
Cornelius Erfort
Electoral Studies, 2024
Article Github
The PARTYPRESS Database
Cornelius Erfort, Lukas F. Stoetzer, and Heike Klüver
Research and Politics, 2023
Article Github Dataverse Hugging Face

Working Papers

Gendered targeting: Do parties tailor their campaign ads to women?, D&R at Journal of Politics (JOP)

Buying Voter Support for Unpopular Policies: Evidence from German Nuclear Power Plants, with António Valentim, and Heike Klüver, Under Review

Who Becomes a Lobbyist?, with Jan Stuckatz, Felix Hartmann, and Heike Klüver

Parties’ issue adaption between elections, with Lukas F. Stoetzer, and Heike Klüver

Measuring protest through news articles: A validation approach for manual and semi-supervised methods using government data

Office hours

By appointment via Calendly or email. If not agreed otherwise, we meet on Zoom.