Stefan Müller

@stefanmueller.bsky.social

4238 Followers 1659 Following

Associate Professor @ucddublin.bsky.social • party competition, public opinion, political communication, computational social science • Maintainer @irishpollingind.bsky.social • Young Academy Ireland stefanmueller.ie

Abstract: The expectation that voters behave rationally has been challenged through studies suggesting that "irrelevant events" like natural disasters and sports results change voting behavior. We test the effect of irrelevant events by matching candidate-level election results from Irish general (1922–2020) and local elections (1942–2019) with games in the men's Gaelic football and hurling championships, the most popular sports in Ireland. Although Irish citizens care deeply about sports, we fail to find any relationship between match results and support for incumbents or politicians of government parties. These findings hold when applying an "unexpected event during survey design" to two representative surveys. Our results contribute to the literature on political accountability and point to conditional effects of irrelevant events.
Abstract: The home advantage in various sports has been well documented. So far, we lack knowledge whether playing in neutral venues indeed removes many, if not all, theoretically assumed advantages of playing at home. Analysing over 3,500 senior men's Gaelic football and hurling matches – field games with the highest participation rates in Ireland – between 2009 and 2018, we test the potential moderating influence of neutral venues. In hurling and Gaelic football, a considerable share of matches is played at neutral venues. We test the influence of neutral venues based on descriptive statistics, and multilevel logistic and multinomial regressions controlling for team strength, the importance of the match, the year, and the sport. With predicted probabilities ranging between 0.8 and 0.9, the favourite team is very likely to win home matches. The predicted probability drops below 0.6 for away matches. At neutral venues, the favourite team has a predicted probability of winning of 0.7. A Coarsened Exact Matching (CEM) approach also reveals very substantive and significant effects for the "treatment" of neutral venues. Overall, neutral venues appear to be an under-utilised option for creating fairer and less predictable competition, especially in single-game knock-out matches.
GAA interest by age (rising from 3.3 for 18–24 year olds to 5.0 for over-65s), by gender (5.0 for men, 4.2 for women), and by area (4.9 rural, 4.4 urban), on a 0–10 scale.
Who is the greatest footballer of all time? 37% Messi 32% Pele 22% Maradona 10% Ronaldo Excluding 35% Don't know/Don't care
EPSS Roundtable 2: Political Dynamics on the Island of Ireland Kevin Cunningham Ireland Thinks and TU Dublin John Garry Queen's University Belfast Gail McElroy Trinity College Dublin Jamie Pow Queen's University Belfast
Reasons for calling bye-elections
Job Details Lecturer/Assistant Professor in European Comparative Politics, UCD School of Politics and International Relations, Temporary Fixed Term 3 Years Applications are invited for a temporary post of a Lecturer/Assistant Professor in European Comparative Politics in the UCD School of Politics and International Relations. Applications are invited for a fixed term appointment as Assistant Professor/Lecturer in the School of Politics and International Relations. The person appointed will be expected to contribute to teaching in the areas of comparative and European Union politics. The successful candidate will be expected to teach undergraduate and graduate modules in their area of specialisation, as well as on broader core modules where required. Interview Date: Interviews will potentially take place in the last week of June 2026 (subject to change). Application Procedure: Applications will consist of a cover letter, in which the applicant will describe how their academic and research profile strategically complements or strengthens the profile of the school, and a complete CV listing all research publications and research grants to date together with any publications submitted for publication but not yet published. 95 Lecturer/Asst Professor Above The Bar (7943) Salary: €65,401 - €103,564 Per Annum Appointment will be made on scale and in accordance with the Department of Finance guidelines Closing date: 12:00 noon (local Irish time) on 19 May 2026.
ECPR Summer School on Parliaments 2026 Goethe-University Frankfurt, Germany 27. July - 06. August 2026 Organised by the ECPR Standing Group on Parliaments, this Summer School brings together students from all over Europe and beyond for eight days of engaging lectures and fruitful exchange. This is your chance to receive feedback on your ongoing research from peers and leading scholars in the field. This is your chance to learn about the latest theoretical and methodological advances in the fields of legislatures, representation and political parties.
A small multiples scatter plot showing Gerry Hutch's first-preference vote share against each other candidate's vote share across electoral districts in Dublin Central, General Election 2024. Each of the twelve panels represents one candidate, coloured by party. A trend line shows the relationship between the two candidates' vote shares in each district.
The Irish Times print edition, 2 February 2026
Abstract As generative artificial intelligence (Al) rapidly reshapes political communication and governance, there is an urgent need to understand its implications for democratic systems. While Al technologies have the potential to strengthen democracy (by improving access to information, enhancing participation, and supporting transparency and accountability) they also pose significant risks. These include the spread of disinformation, algorithmic bias, and the manipulation of electoral processes. Addressing this dual challenge, the project brings together a multidisciplinary network from six Una Europa institutions to develop a pioneering framework for assessing both the democratic risks and opportunities associated with Al. Integrating expertise from political science, communication studies, and computer science, the project will examine the impact of Al on democratic values, electoral integrity, and governance, in close consultation with key societal stakeholders. Core activities include an interdisciplinary research workshop, a grant development workshop, and a virtual training programme on Al for research. Together, these initiatives will strengthen collaboration, build research capacity, and position Una Europa to lead future international funding initiatives in this critical area. By co-developing innovative analytical tools and conceptual frameworks, the project aims to advance the state of the art while contributing to the protection and resilience of democratic systems in the age of Al.
Overview of seminar series, details available at: https://www.ucd.ie/connected_politics/events/
Module Structure Week 1: Introduction to Quantitative Text Analysis (21 January 2026) Week 2: Workflow, R and Quarto (28 January 2026) Week 3: Tokenisation and Document-Feature Matrix (4 February 2026) Week 4: Dictionaries and Sentiment: Old and New Approaches (11 February 2026) Week 5: Describing and Comparing Texts (18 February 2026) Week 6: Supervised, Unsupervised, and Semi-Supervised Scaling (25 February 2026) Week 7: Topic Models (4 March 2026) Week 8: Retrieving, Loading, and Wrangling Text Corpora (25 March 2026) Week 9: Fundamentals of Supervised Document Classification (1 April) Week 10: Transformers: Fundamentals (8 April 2026) Week 11: Fine-Tuning Transformer Models for Classification (15 April 2026) Week 12: Large Language Models: Capabilities and Implications (22 April 2026)
Title page of syllabus: https://muellerstefan.net/teaching/2026-spring-qta.pdf
Front cover of “How Ireland Voted 2024: The New Normal?”
Photo of Trinity College Dublin taken by Stefan Müller
Predictive terms for each policy area
Copies of “How Ireland Voted 2024: The New Normal?”
Title page of Research Group Handbook
Respondents were asked ‘Why’ they voted the way they did in an open-ended text box. These are the responses classified into groups.
Which of the following was most important in making your choice? (Select up to 2) Connolly voters relied on Integrity & Honesty, Competence and Communication skills. Humphreys voters more likely to focus on how the candidate represented Ireland internationally.
Question: Thinking about your number 1, first- preference vote, was that choice mainly FOR your chosen candidate, OR mainly AGAINST another candidate, or both about equally?
Pre-Analysis Plan: Rivalries and Celebrity Candidates: How Sport Shapes Voting Behaviour in Ireland Authors: Liam Kneafsey and Stefan Müller
Abstract: Social media have become a crucial tool for candidates seeking election, allowing them to build a public profile by posting curated content to appeal to potential voters. Focusing on the 2020 Irish General Election, this study investigates how candidates used Twitter to signal their campaign efforts and policy positions, and how their communicative priorities varied based on their gender, competitiveness, and political experience. To do so, we first demonstrate that a transformer-based machine-learning approach based on sentence embeddings can successfully identify social media posts that contain policy and electioneering content. Our findings show that experienced candidates are more likely to emphasise policy-related content than less experienced ones. This pattern also holds for electioneering content when we account for previous engagement with such posts. Contrary to our pre-registered expectations, we find no meaningful differences in the emphasis on electioneering or policy content based on candidates' gender or electoral competitiveness. Overall, our results demonstrate how candidates strategically use social media to shape their public personas during election campaigns in Ireland's candidate-centred electoral system, with multi-member constituencies and strict campaign spending limits.
Ireland's Presidency: More Than a Figurehead? UCD School of Politics and International Relations SPIRe alumni in conversation with Art O'Leary, Executive of An Coimisiún Toghcháin/The Electoral Commission Kevin Rafter, Full Professor of Political Communication at DCU Moderator: Sheila Naughton, RTÉ RSVP and join us Tuesday, September 30 6:30pm, Museum of Literature Ireland
Pipeline for identifying, classifying, and validating textual characteristics in grant peer review reports
Abstract: Peer review is essential to the research lifecycle, yet the contents of grant peer review reports remain underexplored. Our study addresses this gap by developing a pipeline to systematically analyze these reports using Natural Language Processing and Machine Learning. We define twelve categories relevant to funding agencies, create an annotation codebook, fine-tune and validate transformer models, and apply these classifiers to a novel text corpus consisting of 1.6 million sentences from 47,522 grant peer review reports submitted to the Swiss National Science Foundation. This work has critical implications for the academic community. It provides novel insights into the content of grant peer review reports and openly available tools to enhance transparency, fairness, and consistency in grant evaluation. Our findings also highlight differences between journal and grant peer reviews, while the developed framework enables funding agencies and researchers to refine practices, fostering a more trustworthy and efficient evaluation process.
AUTUMN TERM 2025 Gender, Dynastic Ties, and Representational Style in Legislatures Speaker: Nam Pham and Daniel M. Smith (University of Pennsylvania) Wednesday, September 17, 14:00–14:45 (Irish time) Measuring and Mitigating Bias in Parliamentary Discourse Summarisation Speaker: Eoghan Cunningham (University College Dublin) Wednesday, October 1, 14:00–14:45 (Irish time) The Trouble with Cohorts: Reconsidering Generational Differences in Democratic Deconsolidation Speaker: Elissa Berwick (McGill University) Wednesday, October 22, 14:00–14:45 (Irish time) How Descriptive Over- and Under-Representation Impacts Citizens Evaluations of Decision-making across Policy Domains Speaker: Jonathan Slapin (University of Zurich) Wednesday, November 5, 14:00–14:45 (Irish time) Everything Old is New Again: Textual Recycling in UN Resolutions Speaker: Sabrina Arias (Lehigh University) Wednesday, November 12, 14:00–14:45 (Irish time) ‘Undeserved winners’ or ‘more deserving losers’ ? Two types of societal discontent and their relation to radical right and left voting Speaker: Delia Zollinger (University of Zurich) Wednesday, November 26, 14:00–14:45 (Irish time)
EPSS panel formats 2026 Standard Panels These panels focus on the presentation of full research papers. Each panel can include up to five papers and must have one chair and one or two discussants. All panelists must confirm their participation in advance. As a variant chairs might coordinate with their panels to try a flipped approach in which the presenter does not present at all; instead discussants (possibly as many as one per paper) are tasked with both presenting the work and critiquing it Lightning Rounds Fast-paced and engaging, lightning rounds follow a PechaKucha-style format (e.g. 15 slides, x 20 seconds each). Each of 8 presenters gets 5 minutes to share research, followed by 5 minutes of feedback or Q&A. A chair leads with support from 2 discussants. Ideal for sharpening communication skills and getting rapid feedback on emerging work. Author meets critics A panel discussion centered on a major scholarly work—usually a book or article. Panelists will explain the work’s key contributions, offer critiques, and engage in thoughtful debate. This is a great format for deeper engagement with influential scholarship. Topical round tables A panel discussion centered on a topical issue related to the profession or salient political events. Consider involving politicians and practitioners.
Call for Questions: Irish Presidential Election Study The NEDS Management Board invites submissions on questions for inclusion in the Irish Presidential Election Study, which is expected to take place in October 2025. There will be 3 waves- one at the beginning of the campaign, one during the week of the election and one immediately after the election. Researchers are encouraged to submit proposals for survey questions. Questions should be directly related to Irish elections and democracy. Proposals may include single items or short question blocks. Please note that survey space is highly limited, so being concise is essential. As such, shorter single item questions will be viewed more favourably. Researchers proposing a battery of questions should indicate the relative priority of each item. The maximum length for a battery submission is 5-minutes. Researchers are also asked to indicate which wave they would like their question(s) included in. Submission Guidelines Each proposal should be no more than three pages and must include: · Abstract: A concise summary of the proposed question(s). · Theoretical Justification: A clear explanation of the underlying theory and how it connects with existing research in the field. · Question Wording: Exact phrasing of the proposed question(s). · Supporting Evidence: Details of any pre-tests conducted and/or international use of similar questions. · Relevance and Comparability: A statement on the broader applicability of the questions across contexts and their comparability with other datasets. Deadline for questions is 3pm Friday September 12th, 2025. For any queries or to submit your proposal, please contact: Prof Gail McElroy
Chapter 5 Gail McElroy and Stefan Müller What the 2024 Manifestos Reveal: Issue Salience and Left–Right Positions Historically dominated by two centre-right parties, Ireland’s political landscape has long puzzled international commentators and academics. Three recurring questions arise: Why has the left traditionally been so weak? Why is there no far-right party represented in Dáil Éireann? And perhaps the biggest conundrum of all, what truly sets Fianna Fáil apart from Fine Gael? These questions have contributed to Ireland’s reputation as an outlier among its western and northern European peers, with a party system often described as sui generis. Recently, however, there have been signs of a more classic left–right dimension emerging, and the 2020 election marked a significant turning point when a party of the left won a plurality of the votes. In this chapter, we examine the evolving nature of the Irish policy space by analysing the 2024 election manifestos of all the main political parties.
We thank Shaun Bowler, Frederik Hjorth, Sarah King, Joseph Lacey, Yen-Chieh Liao, Robin Rauner, Chiara Valsangiacomo, the editor and anonymous reviewers, and participants at the Annual Conference of the European Political Science Association in Prague, the Politics Research Colloquium at the University of Oxford, the workshop on Election Campaigns and Democratic Norms in Dublin, and the SPIRe Seminar Series at University College Dublin for their comments and improvement suggestions. We are grateful to Yutaka Shinada for sharing digitized candidate manifestos. We would like to thank Daisuke Hakiai, Keiko Higuchi, Momoho Kikukawa, Kana Miyazaki, Tsubasa Nishimura, and Ken Yoshioka for outstanding research assistance.
Predicted probability of obtaining a post (Combined Measure) conditional on the interaction effect between portfolio importance and varying levels of manifesto salience.
Predicted probabilities of obtaining legislative leadership posts conditional on the salience of the same policy area in candidate manifestos.
Overview of classification and aggregation procedure
Correspondence between the frequency of policy areas in the test set based on the BERT predictions and human coding of the same set of statements.
Three typical candidate manifestos
Abstract Do policy priorities that candidates emphasize during election campaigns predict their subsequent legislative activities? We study this question by assembling novel data on legislative leadership posts held by Japanese politicians and using a fine-tuned transformer-based machine learning model to classify policy areas in over 46,900 statements from 1270 candidate manifestos across five elections. We find that a higher emphasis on a policy issue increases the probability of securing a legislative post in the same area. This relationship remains consistent across multiple elections and persists even when accounting for candidates' previous legislative leadership roles. We also discover greater congruence in distributive policy areas. Our findings indicate that campaigns provide meaningful signals of policy priorities.
Book “Foundations of European Politics”
List of variables included in the regression analysis
Average prevalence of positive (A) and negative (B) statements (% of review sentences) by discipline. Horizontal bars show 95% confidence intervals. Separate horizontal axis limits to allow for comparisons within each content category. Overall, reviews tend to be much more positive than negative.
Frequent predictive terms for each content category. The results are based on keyness analyses using χ² tests for each word or multi-word expression, comparing frequencies in sentences where a content characteristic was present (target group) with those where it was absent (reference group).
Average review length by the gender of reviewers and gender of applicants. Dots show mean length (in words), horizontal bars depict 95% confidence intervals.
Average review length conditionally on the research domain. Dots show the mean length (in words), horizontal bars the 95% confidence intervals
Distribution of review reports across research domains and reviewer and applicant characteristics
Abstract Peer review by experts is central to the evaluation of grant proposals, but little is known about how gender and disciplinary differences shape the content and tone of grant peer review reports. We analyzed 39,280 review reports submitted to the Swiss National Science Foundation between 2016 and 2023, covering 11,385 proposals for project funding across 21 disciplines from the Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH), Life Sciences (LS), and Mathematics, Informatics, Natural Sciences, and Technology (MINT). Using supervised machine learning, we classified over 1.3 million sentences by evaluation criteria and sentiment. Reviews in SSH were significantly longer and more critical, with less focus on the applicant’s track record, while those in MINT were more concise and positive, with a higher focus on the track record, as compared to those in LS. Compared to male reviewers, female reviewers write longer reviews that more closely align with the evaluation criteria and express more positive sentiments. Female applicants tend to receive reviews with slightly more positive sentiment than male applicants. Gender and disciplinary culture influence how grant proposals are reviewed–shaping the tone, length, and focus of peer review reports. These differences have important implications for fairness and consistency in research funding.
Dear Stefan Müller, Welcome to European Political Science Society!
The 10 most frequent male and female names across the entire period (1964–2024)
Presentation at the Sciencebatter event
Poster for Sciencebatter event, 14 June, 12-2pm
Everyone agrees that this issue is really important. But we do not know much about this specific question, although it matters a great deal, for these reasons. We approach the problem from this perspective. Our research design focuses on these cases and relies on these data, which we analyze using this method. Results show what we have learned about the question. They have these broader implications.
“ In a new report published as part of its Business Ambition campaign, Ibec said Ireland must increase public investment in research and innovation to 1% of Gross National Income by 2035. The group is also proposing the establishment of a new multiannual fund, modelled on the Programme for Research in Third-Level Institutions, to support the long-term development, maintenance, and talent needs of Ireland’s third-level institutions. The report highlights that industry is responsible for the vast majority of innovation investment in Ireland, while public funding continues to lag significantly.”
Slide showing statistics on party affiliation and levels of volatility.
Photo of book: Gavan Reilly. 2025. The Secret Life of Leinster House
Dog enjoying the sun
Title page of the Narrative CV Toolkit. The link to the document is provided in the post.
This graph compares first-preference vote shares in the 2024 General Election with the Irish Polling Indicator estimates released the day before the election. On average, the election results deviated by less than 0.6 percentage points from the Polling Indicator estimate. With the exception of the Green Party and Solidarity-PBP, the Irish Polling Indicator estimates were within the margin of error.
Most recent Irish Polling Indicator estimates: SF: 22.5% [20–24.5] FF: 22% [21–23.5] FG: 20.5% [18.5–22] Ind/Oth: 10% [8–12] SD: 7.5% [6–9] LAB: 4% [3–5] AÚ: 4% [3.5–5] II: 4% [3.5–5] GP: 3% [2–3.5] SPBP: 2.5% [2–3.5]