Im Schatten von Covid-19: Thematisierungsstrategien der Parteien in der Bundestagswahl 2021

Abstract

The Covid-19 pandemic and its consequences had a significant impact on the social, politi- cal, ecological, and economic life over the past nearly two years . How the political parties’ handled the Covid-19 crisis was therefore also said to have significantly influenced the 2021 federal elections in Germany-not least because of the strong focus on the pandemic during the election campaign . Based on fundamental assumptions of saliency theory, issue ownership theory, and issue framing, the issue competition strategies of political parties represented in the German Bundestag during the 19th electoral period regarding the Cov- id-19 pandemic are examined . For this purpose, it is analyzed how important it was pro- grammatically for the Bundestag elections in 2021 by means of content- and frequency- analytical methods, focusing in particular on party-specific differences and commonalities with regard to thematization strategies . The results show that in the 2021 federal election programs, the Covid-19 pandemic was an important valence-issue and that the established parties prioritized Covid-19 issues in areas of their own issue ownership . The Covid-19 crisis is apparently not only to be understood as a valence issue but also as a positional issue - an aspect that future work could take up and examine in more detail .