Political Public Relations and Election Campaigning

Abstract

This chapter outlines the ways in which political public relations is used as a technique in election campaigning in the United Kingdom and the United States. While diff erences across media systems and political systems are highly important and impact both the use of political public relations and how parties campaign and market themselves in elections (Lees-Marshment, Stromback, & Rudd, 2010; Plasser & Plasser, 2002), many of the strategies and tactics outlined here are highly similar across democratic political systems. Thus, while acknowledging that political and media systems matter and that the United Kingdom and the United States are not representative cases of all Western democracies, the aim of the chapter is to outline how political public relations is used in election campaigns in a way that is valid beyond those two countries.