Two field experiments on Approval Voting in Germany

We report on two field experiments on Approval Voting conducted during actual state and federal elections in Germany. Voters provided approval ballots both for named district candidates and for state parties. The data reveal significant discrepancies in the outcomes under the official method and Approval Voting. Further, our analysis suggests that currently used voting methods do a poor job of representing the electorate's preferences. As a consequence, some recurring features of the political landscape in a given country might be, in part, an artifice of the employed voting method.