National Election Campaign Research Articles

Is All Politics Local? Determinants of Local and National Election Campaigns

In recent decades election campaigns have shifted their focus from the local to the national level, increasingly featuring party leaders, labels, and national platforms. Despite this trend, there remains significant variation in the local/national orientation of campaigns across countries and parties. This article tests several propositions on why campaigns adopt a local or national orientation by analyzing a unique collection of more than 12,000 geocoded Thai election posters. Specialized software was used to measure the spatial proportions of visual and textual content on each poster. Using Thailand’s mixed electoral system to enable a controlled comparison of electoral rules, I demonstrate that proportional rules were associated with national campaign strategies whereas majoritarian rules fostered local strategies. In addition, large parties ran party-centered, policy-focused campaigns whereas small parties relied more on their leader’s image. This contrasts with Western countries, where large parties increasingly promote their leader’s image and small parties emphasize narrower policy objectives.

Speaking their Mind: Populist Style and Antagonistic Messaging in the Tweets of Donald Trump, Narendra Modi, Nigel Farage, and Geert Wilders

The authors in this study examined the function and public reception of critical tweeting in online campaigns of four nationalist populist politicians during major national election campaigns. Using a mix of qualitative coding and case study inductive methods, we analyzed the tweets of Narendra Modi, Nigel Farage, Donald Trump, and Geert Wilders before the 2014 Indian general elections, the 2016 UK Brexit referendum, the 2016 US presidential election, and the 2017 Dutch general election, respectively. Our data show that Trump is a consistent outlier in terms of using critical language on Twitter when compared to Wilders, Farage, and Modi, but that all four leaders show significant investment in various forms of antagonistic messaging including personal insults, sarcasm, and labeling, and that these are rewarded online by higher retweet rates. Building on the work of Murray Edelman and his notion of a political spectacle, we examined Twitter as a performative space for critical rhetoric within the frame of nationalist politics. We found that cultural and political differences among the four settings also impact how each politician employs these tactics. Our work proposes that studies of social media spaces need to bring normative questions into traditional notions of collaboration. As we show here, political actors may benefit from in-group coalescence around antagonistic messaging, which while serving as a call to arms for online collaboration for those ideologically aligned, may on a societal level lead to greater polarization.

Kan-di(e)-dat?

Angela Merkel’s four national election campaigns offer a unique opportunity to explore the salience of gender in defining “competent leadership” in unified Germany. Women-friendly themes were deliberately avoided by the candidate and her party during her first two campaigns, but Merkel’s personal popularity rendered gender a positive asset during her third run for the Chancellorship in 2013. The 2017 campaign accorded new salience to gender as an electoral variable, albeit with a twist. The new dilemma for Germany’s first female leader was rooted in the need to win back alienated, if apolitical conservative men, attracted to an increasingly xenophobic Alternative for Germany. Although the GDR gender regime actively supported working women, eastern men appear to feel particularly threatened by the concrete advances towards gender equality witnessed across Germany since unification.

Old versus new politics

The article focuses on the party political spaces in four Southern European countries (i.e. Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Spain) since the onset of the Euro crisis. To understand the emerging conflict structures, it argues for the need to consider that these countries simultaneously face an economic crisis and a political crisis and that both crises have strong domestic and European components. Moreover, the major driving forces of change tend to be social movements and political parties that forcefully combine opposition to austerity and to “old politics.” This leads to a complex conflict structure shaped by struggles over austerity and political renewal. In this structure, divides over economic and political issues are closely aligned with each other. While this pattern emerges everywhere, there are distinct country differences. Empirically, the article relies on original data from a large-scale content analysis of national election campaigns in the four countries in the period 2011 to 2015.

Two crates of beer and 40 pizzas: the adoption of innovative political behavioural targeting techniques

Political campaigns increasingly use data to (micro)target voters with tailored messages. In doing so, campaigns raise concerns about privacy and the quality of the public discourse. Extending existing research to a European context, we propose and test a model for understanding how different contextual factors hinder or facilitate data-driven capabilities of campaigns. We applied the model during the 2017 national election campaign in the Netherlands. The results show how data-driven targeting techniques are not only useful in a first-past-the-post system, but also in a proportional representation system, which at first sight seems to be less suitable for such techniques.

Social media election campaigning: who is working for whom? A conceptual exploration of digital political labour

ABSTRACTThis paper posits the notion of digital political labour (DPL) as a rewarding concept for the analysis of political communication and social media. Numerous studies conclude that the engagement, dialogic and social affordances of social media have not yet been realised. But despite the lack of direct interaction, active audiences are, by their own actions in social media, taking part in DPL since audiences do not only receive political messages but contribute significantly with their own user-generated content. The empirical data in this study are from the official Facebook pages of Swedish political parties during the 2014 national election campaign. The results show that most of the communications work is actually performed by the audiences, and not by the parties themselves. This study highlight two important dimensions of DPL where users constitute targets and carriers of advertising as well as audiences whose free labour generates political campaign content.

From hybrid media system to hybrid-media politicians: Danish politicians and their cross-media presence in the 2015 national election campaign

ABSTRACTAn increasingly complex hybrid system of social and traditional news media surrounds Nordic election campaigns as politically experienced incumbents favor traditional news media and younger, lesser known candidates’ social media. Despite little evidence for hybrid-media politicians, politicians’ media use is changing rapidly; 15%–16% of Danish candidates used Twitter in 2011 but 68% in 2015. In this large-sample content analysis, party leaders have high traditional news media and low Twitter presence, and younger candidates vice versa, but some politicians have high presence in both. Hybrid-media politicians are younger than the average Danish Parliament member, represent various parties, and likely come from the greater Copenhagen area.

Do Channels Matter?

This study investigates the agenda-building process as it involves multiple information sources. Next to traditional news media like television newscasts and newspapers, the study considers online news sites and news agencies in the agenda-building process. Furthermore, the policy agenda is differentiated into the agenda of governing and opposition parties. The scope is to give a compressive overview of the agenda-building process during election campaigns as it involves several information sources and occurs within the 24-hour news cycle. Additionally, this study aims to conceptualize the agenda-building potential of various information sources by discussing their features, i.e. channel characteristics. Therefore, we focus on the impact of two specific characteristics, namely stability and flexibility in the agenda-building process. To test the theoretical assumptions, a semi-automatic content analysis of 15 policy issues in 14 online news sites, 18 newspapers, nine newscasts, wire copy and press releases of six parties was conducted during the last six weeks of the Austrian national election campaign 2013. Findings indicate that during the 24-hour news cycle, agenda building is a multi-directional process shaped by the channel characteristics stability and flexibility. Additionally, newswires and online news sites of traditional media outlets are important agenda builders during election times.

Genuine effects of vote advice applications on party choice: Filtering out factors that affect both the advice obtained and the vote

Previous research shows effects of the advice from voting advice applications (VAAs) on party choice. These effects could be spurious because common antecedent factors like prior voting, a voter's prior issue positions and election campaign news may explain both party choice and the opinions someone reports to the VAA, and hence the voting advice obtained from the VAA. Often VAAs will advise users to opt for parties that they were already likely to vote for, based on antecedent factors. Here, three-wave panel surveys and media content data for the Dutch national election campaigns of 2010 and 2012 are employed. In spite of spurious correlations resulting from common antecedent factors, genuine VAA effects show up, especially for doubting voters. Party change based on positive VAA-advice for a party is least likely (a) for voters who already have an abundance of antecedent factors in favour of that party anyway, and (b) for those without a single antecedent factor in favour of that party. Genuine VAA effects imply that VAAs make it less easy for political parties to neglect each other's owned issues, because VAAs weigh issues equally for each party.

Gender-based power language and American political debates

The last 40 years have produced an abundance of research about gender-based power language, the relationship between language and power and how language expresses power. Particular attention has been paid to asymmetrical discourse between the sexes (Lakoff, 1975, 2004; Fishman, 1978; Lipman-Blumen, 1984). The purpose of this study was to examine the power language currently being used 30+ years after the main research to see if there have been any changes on the part of the female to broker power relationships through linguistic behaviors. This study examined three male vs. female political debates in three U.S. national election campaigns. An analytical scale based on a combination of woman/man discourse and power discourse was used. This study concluded that women have made significant progress in asserting and maintaining power in controlled debate situations; also male/female asymmetry seems to be reduced, and that culture has also become determinant of power relations. Â

Gender-based power language and American political debates

The last 40 years have produced an abundance of research about gender-based power language, the relationship between language and power and how language expresses power. Particular attention has been paid to asymmetrical discourse between the sexes (Lakoff, 1975, 2004; Fishman, 1978; Lipman-Blumen, 1984). The purpose of this study was to examine the power language currently being used 30+ years after the main research to see if there have been any changes on the part of the female to broker power relationships through linguistic behaviors. This study examined three male vs. female political debates in three U.S. national election campaigns. An analytical scale based on a combination of woman/man discourse and power discourse was used. This study concluded that women have made significant progress in asserting and maintaining power in controlled debate situations; also male/female asymmetry seems to be reduced, and that culture has also become determinant of power relations. Â

Campaigning in the fourth age of political communication. A multi-method study on the use of Facebook by German and Austrian parties in the 2013 national election campaigns

ABSTRACTStarting from the contribution to the discussion on a fourth age of political communication, here we argue that, as a consequence of how the Web 2.0 has changed political campaigns, the theoretical time-bound three-phase models of political campaigning must be reconsidered. We propose four ideal campaign types based on their ideal-typical target audience: partisan-, mass-, target group- and individual-centered campaigns. In reality, each campaign combines elements of all types. To examine this mixture empirically, we apply a most similar systems design and investigate five German and six Austrian parties’ use of Facebook in the 2013 national election campaigns. On the basis of face-to-face interviews with the campaign managers and a quantitative content analysis of the respective parties’ Facebook pages, we analyze how parties used Facebook as a campaigning tool to inform, interact with, and mobilize voters, as well as which target audiences they addressed. We find that, although the campaign managers declare Facebook their most important Web 2.0 campaigning tool, the German and Austrian parties did not make use of Facebook’s interactive and mobilizing potential, rather relying on mass-centered information, possibly due to the framework conditions in both countries. Based on our findings, we conclude that the role of context for election campaigning should be discussed more carefully.

Setting the Trend or Changing the Game? Professionalization and Digitalization of Election Campaigns in Sweden

Professionalization and digitalization are two distinctive features of election campaigns in the twenty-first century. Are existing campaign structures and strategies reinforced by the implementation of new technology, or does this technology radically change campaigning conditions? This article investigates this topic by analyzing the two most recent national election campaigns in Sweden in 2010 and 2014. The results indicate that both professionalization and digitalization tendencies are strong, but most clearly linked to each other among bigger, catch-all campaign parties, while smaller niche parties in a multiparty system tend to choose different campaign options with regard to structure and strategies.

Where you lead we will follow: a longitudinal study of strategic political communication in election campaigning

AbstractThe ways in which election campaigns are planned, organized, and conducted have changed considerably during recent decades, and political parties constantly employ new ideas and practices in order to communicate as strategically and effectively as possible. The concept of strategic political communication refers to an organization's purposeful management of information and communication to achieve certain political goals. In this article, we focus on the role of the individual political party in developing election campaigning. The empirical material covers the 2002, 2006, and 2010 Swedish national election campaigns and illustrates how political parties lead and follow each other in the development of strategic political communication. By exploring party agency, this article contributes to the understanding of how ideas and practices of strategic political communication emerge and develop over time in election campaigning.

Intermedia agenda-setting in a multimedia news environment

This article analyzes intermedia agenda-setting processes during a national election campaign of 38 newspapers, online news sites, TV news programs, as well as a wire service, through semi-automatic content analysis and time series analysis. The theoretical assumption was that intermedia agenda-setting is determined by the production structures of certain media types, the opinion-leader role of specific media outlets, and issue-specific characteristics. The findings suggest that, despite previous evidence to the contrary, intermedia agenda-setting also occurs during election campaigns, with a short time lag of 1 day. Additionally, a medium’s opinion-leader role depends strongly on issue-specific characteristics, such as obtrusiveness and proximity, mediating the intermedia agenda-setting process. And the traditional role of print media as intermedia agenda-setters is found to be challenged by online news sites.

Voter mobilisation in context

This special issue arose from a collaboration between researchers at the University of Manchester and Duke University that was funded by the Economic Social and Research Council [ES/J019453/1]. The project sought to examine the nature of voter contact in the digital age in comparative context. In particular we were interested to understand the extent to which parties and candidates were seeking to mobilise voters during national election campaigns in the US and UK using new communication channels such as email, sms/text messages, and social media. After benchmarking the use of these tactics in national campaigns we also wanted to address the 64 million dollar question of whether these methods actually worked. Does online contact actually increase the likelihood that someone will turn out to vote? And if so, how effective is it in comparison with other more conventional methods? Our interest in researching these questions was triggered by the general growth in use of these tools across both countries and particularly the high profile e-campaign of Barack Obama to reach the White House in 2008. In the course of conducting our research on the effects of new forms of voter contact we faced some immediate questions about the extent to which internet-based methods can be meaningfully compared with more traditional offline modes. Given the rapid proliferation in the types of online communication channels now available, how far can a simple binary division into online and offline channels really capture this new complexity? How do we take account of the increasingly complex and indirect web of connections through which parties’ online messages can be conveyed and also the extent to which parties themselves can control this? While email is perhaps the closest approximation to the more conventional ‘surgical’ methods that parties use such as direct mail and phone calls, platforms such as Facebook and Twitter are more than simply conduits for content but are themselves immersive new social spaces. The idea of the internet and particularly social media serving as a new context for mobilisation prompted us to think more generally about how far the field had moved and broadened both substantively and methodologically since the seminal work of Rosenstone and Hansen in the early 1990s. What new forces now impinge on voter contacting and how far do the old channels remain potent? In particular, how have advances in technology affected parties’ strategies and improved their capacity to target voters? What are some of the ‘new’ contextual factors that we might need to consider, particularly beyond expressly political and institutional channels? And finally what new methods are available to best capture this wider complexity of affective forces? To explore these questions we invited leading scholars within the field to reflect on the current and past state of voter mobilisation research as well as to provide us with some fresh empirical evidence about the relevance of context in shaping parties’ GOTV efforts. The papers gathered here represent the fruits of that effort and provide a rich insight into and update on the impact of a variety of technological, social, economic and political influences on parties’ GOTV efforts.

Does Public Service TV and the Intensity of the Political Information Environment Matter?

In recent years, a number of studies have suggested a positive linkage between public service broadcasting and public knowledge about current affairs. Most studies are, however, based on aggregate, cross-sectional data. On the individual level they fall short of establishing any causal linkage between TV news exposure and public knowledge. In addition, studies which investigate whether the intensity of the political information environment matters for learning effects from watching TV news, are missing. Against this background, this study compares knowledge effects from watching public service and commercial TV news in three contexts that vary in the intensity of the political information environment: a national election campaign, a European parliamentary election campaign and a non-election period. Among other things, the results show stronger knowledge effects from watching public service than commercial TV news.

Negative Campaigning and the Logic of Retaliation in Multiparty Competition.

The extant literature has demonstrated that the logic of retaliation is a core feature of negative campaigning. Attacks by one side induce counterattacks by the other. Yet most research on the interactive nature of negative campaigning is limited to two-party competition and provides little theoretical justification for why political actors should respond to attacks with counterattacks. The present paper addresses these research gaps. We argue that the negativity bias in human information processing and the zero-sum nature of elections make retaliation a rational strategy. Importantly, these arguments also imply that retaliation may not be the only plausible response to attacks in multiparty systems. Rather, parties may prefer to react to attacks from one competitor by attacking another. To grasp empirically how being attacked and attacking are related, we conduct a highly disaggregated time series analysis of such instances while controlling for other factors that may influence actor behavior. Our analyses draw on several thousand party press releases issued during three national election campaigns in Austria, a typical European multiparty system. They show that retaliation is an important strategy also in multiparty politics. Yet in such context, parties do not exclusively follow a tit-for-tat approach but rather display more complex patterns of attack behavior.

Party debate over Europe in national election campaigns: Electoral disunity and party cohesion

AbstractFew political parties are willing to lead the public debate on how the European Union should develop and parties rarely publicly discuss issues on the EU agenda. This is probably one of the most important democratic problems in the contemporary EU. When and why parties are willing (or not willing) to discuss European cooperation is therefore an essential issue in which political science should engage. Previous research has shown that parties that are internally divided on EU issues downplay these issues in order to avoid internal disputes. At the same time, parties that have severe intraparty conflicts over the issue are unable to contain the debate. Thus, parties that are unified in their position on EU issues and parties that are heavily split speak about the EU, but others do not. Also, earlier research has shown that political parties downplay issues in response to internal divisions among their supporters. It is argued in this article that the focus should not be solely on intraparty conflict or whether or not a party's voters are hesitant or disunited, but rather on how these factors interact in order to better understand how parties act strategically regarding EU issues. Using a new dataset that relies on quantitative content analysis of quality newspapers during the national election campaigns in the period 1983–2010 in France, Germany, the United Kingdom and Sweden, it is found that parties that have a high degree of internal dissent on European issues, while at the same time having an equally divided electorate, are the parties that are most present in the public debate. Hence, it is the interaction between these two important factors that explains much of the variation in the amount of attention paid to European issues in national election campaigns.

The BJP and Hindu Nationalism: Centrist Politics and Majoritarian Impulses

Will the BJP pursue its Hindutva ideology while in power or will it now gradually become a ‘centrist’ party? Responding to this question, the present paper argues that the possibility that it would transform into a centrist party is rather dim for four reasons: 1) the mixing of Hindutva identity with the development agenda during the national election campaign in 2014; 2) the mild and covert pursuit of Hindutva by both party and government; 3) the dynamic, but deep-rooted relationship between Hindutva and the BJP; and 4) most importantly, the slow and imperceptible shifting of the middle ground of public opinion in India in favour of majoritarian (and therefore pro-Hindutva) sentiment.