Party Election Campaigns Research Articles

The Evolution of Electoral Technologies in Germany and the Bundestag Elections of 1998

The subject of the study is the federal election campaigns of the main competitors in the German Bundestag elections of 1998 - the CDU and the SPD. The object of the study is the evolution of German political culture related to the practice of conducting federal election campaigns. The purpose of this work is to analyze the election campaigns of the CDU and the SPD in 1998 to identify new elements of the professionalized, "Americanized", modernized campaign of the SPD, which, against the background of the traditional CDU campaign, contributed to the victory of the Social Democrats and the coming to power in Germany of the "red-green" coalition led by Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder. The scientific novelty of the article is that the effectiveness of election campaigns is considered as one of the significant factors influencing the outcome of the party-political struggle, and the 1998 elections are considered as one of the turning points in the evolution of German political culture in terms of party election campaigns. The successful SPD campaign, which abandoned many traditional elements and actively borrowed new electoral practices from the United States and Great Britain, had a significant impact on the modernization of the forms and methods of electoral struggle of the main parties in Germany in the next two decades.

Implementing a multi-criteria decision-making approach to a new party's election campaign – A case study

During pre-election campaigns, parties make great efforts to persuade constituents to vote for them. Usually, new parties have smaller budgets and fewer resources than veteran parties. In particular, the more heterogeneous the party's electorate, the more critical the issue of resource allocation is. This paper presents a method to allocate new party's campaign advertising resources efficiently to maximize its voters. The model developed uses Pareto principle and multi-criteria approach and integrates party's confidential data together with an official open-to-all data. The model produced clear and unbiased results, and these advantages made it effective and user-friendly for the strategic team and campaign managers. We implemented the model on a specific new party during the intensive political period before the April 2019 elections in Israel.•This paper analyses the issue of allocating new party's campaign advertising resources efficiently to maximize its voters.•Our model integrates Pareto principle with multi-criteria decision-making approach and uses the party's confidential data together with official open to all state data.•The model produced clear and unbiased results, and these advantages made it effective and user-friendly for the strategic team and campaign managers.

Targeting Crowds: A study of how the Norwegian Labour Party adapted Nazi rhetorical methodology

The immense success of post WWI Europeantotalitarian regimes form the backdrop for this study. Political success is often credited cleverly crafted communication strategies. The Norwegian Labour Party applied methods similar to those found in Nazi Germany as of 1933/34, luring voters away from the dogmatic Right and Left, to the leftist social democratic movement. One key element of this highly successful strategy is the shift from a somber accentuation on methods of scientific persuasion, emphasizing a perceived rationale of a social system based in Marxism, to propaganda, bombarding masses with slogans and one-liners. Another key element is an acknowledgement of indifferent voters. The vast majority of the voter potential did not attend political meeting and were unable to recognize and separate ideologies. This led party strategists to developing methodologieson how to approach voters as crowds, not merely as individual citizens in large numbers. Recognizing the homogeneity and protective environment of the Darwinian herd, crowds became target groups for the Labour Party election campaigns, in which they found gratification by unison songs, theatrical entertainment and simple slogans.

“Cameron 2010”: An Exemplification of Personality-Based Campaigning

This article examines the Conservative party election campaign of 2010 and in particular the role of its leader, David Cameron, and of the role of his close coterie of advisers who would become known as “Cameron Central.” We see that David Cameron is all too aware of the increasing importance of the trends in “the personalization of politics” and all too willing to acquiesce in them. Moreover, the first ever prime ministerial television debates would effectively derail the campaign plan and undermine the effectiveness of “a central theme,” which could give an organized core and meaning to the campaign. Indeed, we shall see that “Cameron 2010” neatly encapsulates what was the 2010 Conservative party election campaign.

A Call to Action: New Party Candidates and the 1931 General Election*

Sir Oswald Mosley established his New Party in early 1931. It proposed to cut across the party and class divides, with the objective of providing a ‘national’ solution to the economic crisis of the time. According to Mosley, the ‘old parties’– meaning the Labour, Conservative and Liberal Parties – had revealed themselves unable to adapt to the post‐war age. In their place, he argued, a modern organisation, based on youth, vitality and a scientifically reasoned economic plan, was needed to save Britain from terminal decline. Few heeded his call, and the party ultimately paved the way for the British Union of Fascists to emerge in 1932. Nevertheless, the New Party fought the general election of 1931, offering an unsuccessful but suitably intriguing challenge to the National coalition and Labour Party. This article will assess the New Party's election campaign, concentrating on those who briefly rallied to Mosley's appeal only to fall foul of the ballot box. In other words, it provides a case study of those who contributed to a dramatic electoral failure, and traces a significant stage along Mosley's journey to fascism.

How to win a landslide by really trying: the effects of local campaigning on voting in the 1997 British general election

There is a continuing debate among political scientists and commentators about the relevance of local party campaigns in influencing the vote in British general elections. We review that debate in the case of the 1997 British general election, and then go on to specify and estimate models of the influence of local campaigning on the constituency vote share for Labour, the Liberal Democrats, and the Conservatives in that election. In contrast to the Michigan studies, which have tended to emphasise long-term partisan and policy-related predispositions, the results of our analysis show that local campaigning, measured from surveys of local party members together with proxy variables based on constituency spending data, had a very important influence on the vote. The effects appear to be strongest for the Liberal Democrats, important for New Labour, and rather weak for the Conservatives. The findings are relevant for both debates about campaign effects in Britain and debates about the electoral–professional party model. The results imply that the image of the electoral–professional party as a well-organised ‘army’ that obeys commands from the centre is misleading when applied to understanding party election campaigns.

Party strategies in the electoral market: Political marketing in West Germany, Britain and Ireland

Abstract. The use of a political marketing framework to describe modern party election campaigns can be useful for comparison over time, between and within countries. This paper concentrates on inter‐country comparisons, examining the election compaigns of the West German Christian Democrats in 1983, the British Conservatives in 1983 and the Irish Fine Gael party in 1981. Political marketing is defined as the application of promotional activities to direct an exchange with voters through the use of such instruments as product policy, communications policies and distribution. Among the paper's main findings are, first, that the CDU were the only party to have communications policies which closely matched their product policy and, second, that distribution activities appear to be where future campaign developments are likely to concentrate. The paper concludes with a discussion on some specific aspects of political marketing including effects, financial corruption and the part political marketing plays in the general evolution of the electoral process.

The strategy to market Fine Gael in 1981

Abstract This paper examines the proposition that contemporary party election campaigns can be conceived of and assessed in marketing terms. Fine Gael's perparations for the Irish 1981 election are examined in terms of a political marketing framework comprising elements such as market research, communications strategies and product policy. This paper finds that it is only in relation to part of the product policy that Fine Gael's marketing preparations were incomplete, the result of the last minute release of the manifesto proposals. In conclusion, it is argued that ‘political marketing’ is a reality and that consideration should be given to the implications of this for matters such as party financing, media coverage and rational political debate.