Media framing of election results is part of my joint research agenda with Thomas Meyer at the University of Vienna. Winning and losing in countries with multiple parties and proportional electoral systems is rarely clear-cut. Who is actually considered a winner and who are the losers? We have thus far conducted some first research into the media perspective in the context of the 2019 European Parliament elections, finding that media reporting was biased towards parties with radical socio-cultural positions as extreme parties were considered more newsworthy and more often presented as a winner than moderate parties, irrespective of their actual electoral performance. We also have a paper under review that studies media framing effects on voter perceptions of election winners and losers using both experimental and panel survey data.

In our new project that is funded by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO), we want to shed light into what really happens on election night and in the immediate aftermath. The purpose of this project is to understand how and why politicians and journalists try to frame election results in a certain way in the immediate aftermath of democratic elections. It will also examine the extent to which such framing has effects on voter perceptions of winners and losers alongside political and media cynicism.

Future research questions also address electoral integrity perceptions and perceived legitimacy of election outcomes.

Blog post:

Gattermann, K., Meyer, T.M., & Wurzer, K. (2 December 2021). The media chooses who has won (and lost) an election – and it’s not just based on objective electoral performance. ECPR’s The Loop

Major publications:

Meyer, T.M., & Gattermann, K. (2025). Does media framing of election results affect whether voters perceive parties as election winners or losers? Political Studies, https://doi.org/10.1177/00323217251350742

Meyer, T.M., & Gattermann, K. (2022). Party contestation and news visibility abroad: the 2019 European Parliament elections from a pan-European perspective. European Union Politics, 23(3), 398-416.

Gattermann, K., Meyer, T., & Wurzer, K. (2022). Who won the election? Explaining news coverage of election results in multi-party systems. European Journal of Political Research, 61(4), 857-877.