The times they are a-changin’: party campaign strategies in the 2018 Italian election

Abstract

The 2018 Italian election produced striking results, with both a historic success for the two challenger parties (League and M5S) and massive defeats for the two mainstream parties (PD and FI). This article analyses party campaign strategies and their consistency with the opportunity structures provided by the configuration of Italian public opinion. Relying on issue-yield theory, original survey data were collected for both issue support and priority among Italian voters, and party emphases on issues in the electoral campaign – through Twitter data. The findings indicate a generalised ideological inconsistency of the constituencies of the main parties, while campaign strategies appear much more ideologically consistent. Moreover, it is found that parties focused mostly on conflict-mobilisation strategies, rather than on problem solving. Finally, the article shows that, in general, parties acted strategically, by aligning their campaign to the available opportunities, although with relevant variations across parties.     

Parties’ issue strategies on the drawing board: the 2017 Austrian case

Abstract

Parties may rely on different issue agendas when tailoring their electoral campaigns in an attempt to win elections. This paper compares two key party issue strategies to examine which one the victorious Austrian Peoples’ Party (ÖVP) relied on the most during the 2017 Austrian election campaign vis-à-vis its main competitors. These two key party strategies are the ‘riding-the-wave’ model, which posits that parties focus on issues that currently concern voters the most and the recent ‘issue-yield model’, which instead suggests that parties adopt strategic behaviour targeting all those issues with genuine opportunities for electoral expansion. It is found that, compared to the other main parties in the 2017 Austrian election campaign, the ÖVP was the one most clearly relying on the issue-yield approach. These results have important implications for our understanding of electoral campaigns, party’s exploitation of issue strategies, and voter representation beyond the Austrian case.     

Issue yield,campaign communication,and electoral performance: a six-country comparative analysis

Abstract

This article develops and tests a model that explains election outcomes on the basis of party strategy. It employs a new comparative dataset linking representative mass surveys from six European countries with Twitter analysis of campaign activity. The expectation is that parties whose issue agendas exploit electoral opportunities while avoiding risks will be rewarded at the polls. These risks and opportunities are modelled using issue yield, a general framework summarising public support, electoral alignments, and party credibility. Empirically, the article traces a three-step process: (1) the configuration of electoral risks and opportunities (which is captured through public opinion surveys) guides party communication (measured with Twitter data), and to the degree that (2) parties design their campaigns strategically (identified through issue yield), this in turn (3) improves their electoral performance (measured using official statistics). The analysis explains some of the most salient election outcomes of recent years.     

The United Kingdom 2017 election: polarisation in a split issue space

Abstract

After decades in which party competition was fought in the centre ground, the 2017 UK General Election witnessed a return to more conflictual politics. This article assesses public support for the electoral strategies of the main parties and examines the extent to which the issues the parties campaigned on resonated with their own supporters, as well as with the wider public. Drawing on the issue-yield framework, the article shows that the Conservative campaign – generally considered to be badly run – did not focus on issues that would fully exploit the opportunities for expanding support that were open to the party. Labour, by contrast, played a much better hand. While taking a clear left-wing stance on many policies that were popular with its constituency, the party also skilfully emphasised valence issues that Labour is often seen as more credible on, such as healthcare and education.     

How parties compete for votes: A test of saliency theory

Saliency theory is among the most influential accounts of party competition, not least in providing the theoretical framework for the Comparative Manifesto Project – one of the most widely used data collections in comparative politics. Despite its prominence, not all empirical implications of the saliency theory of party competition have yet been systematically tested. This article addresses five predictions of saliency theory, the central claim of which is that parties compete by selective issue emphasis rather than by direct confrontation. Since a fair test of the theory's assumptions needs to rely on data that measures party issue saliency and party positions independently, this article draws on new manifesto data from the Austrian National Election Study (AUTNES). Analysing all manifestos issued for the 2002, 2006 and 2008 general elections, it shows that saliency theory correctly identifies some features of party competition. For instance, parties disproportionally emphasise issues they ‘own’. Yet, the core assumption of saliency theory that parties compete via selective issue emphasis rather than direct confrontation over the same issues fails to materialise in the majority of cases.     

How party‒issue linkages vary between election manifestos and media debates

Abstract

Existing research on party behaviour has largely focused on the drivers of issue salience in direct party communication. However, less is known about party?issue linkages in election campaigns covered by the mass media, from which most voters get their information about party positions. Against this background, this article explores how two important drivers of issue salience in direct party communication – issue ownership and systemic salience – play out in the media. Based on considerations about the news value of specific party?issue associations, one would expect both relationships to be particularly important in the media. Despite substantial similarities in party?issue linkages across platforms, a comparison of manifestos and newspaper content reveals evidence for this claim. In particular, smaller parties are hardly covered in the news on issues they do not own, while large parties are especially covered on salient topics. These findings contribute to our understanding of issue competition in mediated environments.     

Can wedge strategies by mainstream parties cross-cut the anti-immigration far right vote?

Anti-immigration campaigns have helped far right parties to establish themselves in party systems around the world. We examine whether mainstream parties can employ wedge issue campaigns that divide the far right anti-immigration vote to win back electoral support. Wedge issues that cross-cut the anti-immigration vote may enhance the electoral support of mainstream parties, as long as they do not simultaneously alienate pro-immigration voters. We evaluate this expectation using a panel survey experiment conducted during the 2021 German federal election. The first wave allows us to identify wedge issues that the mainstream CDU/CSU can stress to cross-cut the anti-immigration vote. The second wave raises the salience of these issues by manipulating the perceived issue agenda of the CDU/CSU using hypothetical campaign posters. While our results show that wedge issue strategies are not effective on average, exploratory analyses reveal the potential of strategically targeted messaging in winning back support of some anti-immigration voters.     

Voter polarisation and party responsiveness: Why parties emphasise divided issues,but remain silent on unified issues

How does voter polarisation affect party responsiveness? Previous research has shown that political parties emphasise political issues that are important to their voters. However, it is posited in this article that political parties are not equally responsive to citizen demands across all issue areas. The hypothesis is that party responsiveness varies considerably with the preference configuration of the electorate. More specifically, it is argued that party responsiveness increases with the polarisation of issues among voters. To test these theoretical expectations, party responsiveness is analysed across nine West European countries from 1982 until 2013. Data on voter attention and voter preferences with regard to specific policy issues from a variety of national election studies is combined with Comparative Manifestos Project data on parties' emphasis of these issues in their election manifestos. The findings have major implications for understanding party competition and political representation in Europe.     

When do parties emphasise extreme positions? How strategic incentives for policy differentiation influence issue importance

Parties have an incentive to take up extreme positions in order to achieve policy differentiation and issue ownership, and it would make sense for a party to stress these positions as well. These incentives are not the same for all issues and all parties but may be modified by other strategic conditions: party size, party system size, positional distinctiveness and systemic salience. Using manifesto‐based measures of salience and expert assessments of party positions, the findings in this article are that parties emphasise extreme positions if, first, they are relatively small in terms of vote share; second, the extreme position is distinctive from those of other parties; and third, other parties fail to emphasise the issue. These findings have consequences for our understanding of party strategies, party competition and the radicalisation of political debates.     

It’s no longer the economy,stupid! Issue yield at the 2017 German federal election

Abstract

This article demonstrates that the issue-yield concept is able to predict the electoral strategies of mainstream and challenger parties at the 2017 German federal election. While the electorate of mainstream parties favour valence issues, the Greens and the AfD can gain more by concentrating on socio-cultural positional issues. Relying on a unique survey covering 17 positional issues and 10 valence issues as well as an analysis of Twitter accounts, the article shows that contemporary Germany is characterised by a centrifugal competition on the socio-cultural dimension. At the same time, an asymmetric ideological confrontation persists on the socio-economic dimension, because the Left and the SPD still refer to their traditional welfare issues while the bourgeois parties no longer counter this with a contrasting free-market ideology. Thus, the economy is currently not the decisive issue in German politics. Migration, integration, and other socio-cultural issues are rather driving electoral competition.     

Simple politics for the people? Complexity in campaign messages and political knowledge

Which parties use simple language in their campaign messages, and do simple campaign messages resonate with voters’ information about parties? This study introduces a novel link between the language applied during election campaigns and citizens’ ability to position parties in the ideological space. To this end, how complexity of campaign messages varies across parties as well as how it affects voters’ knowledge about party positions is investigated. Theoretically, it is suggested that populist parties are more likely to simplify their campaign messages to demarcate themselves from mainstream competitors. In turn, voters should perceive and process simpler campaign messages better and, therefore, have more knowledge about the position of parties that communicate simpler campaign messages. The article presents and validates a measure of complexity and uses it to assess the language of manifestos in Austria and Germany in the period 1945–2013. It shows that political parties, in general, use barely comprehensible language to communicate their policy positions. However, differences between parties exist and support is found for the conjecture about populist parties as they employ significantly less complex language in their manifestos. Second, evidence is found that individuals are better able to place parties in the ideological space if parties use less complex campaign messages. The findings lead to greater understanding of mass‐elite linkages during election campaigns and have important consequences for the future analysis of manifesto data.     

Issue ownership attack: how a political party can counteract a rival’s issue ownership

Abstract

A central part of representative democracy is that voters evaluate political parties based on how competently they handle issues, so-called ‘issue ownership’. Since issue ownership is a central ingredient in the vote choice, rival parties often try to influence how voters evaluate a competing party. This is an issue ownership attack. However, despite intense scholarly interest in issue ownership, the understanding of how parties shape issue ownership is very limited. Therefore a new theoretical model is tested here to understand issue ownership attack. Using several survey experiments, the analysis shows that a mainstream party can counteract another mainstream party’s issue ownership by reframing the issue and by blaming the party for its performance, but not by changing its own position on the issue. Hence, the study not only advances the understanding of issue ownership stability and change but also brings important insights on how parties influence voters.     

Parties’ policy adjustments in response to changes in issue saliency

Abstract

A number of studies have investigated when parties change their policy positions. However, this growing body of research has had limited interaction with the literature on issue competition. To bring these two perspectives together, this article investigates how and when parties adjust their respective policy positions on immigration, the environment and the welfare state. In the article it is argued that especially large parties in electoral terms adjust their policy positions on specific issues in response to changes in the party system saliency of these issues. When the other parties increase their focus on a given issue, large parties adjust their position in the direction preferred by a majority of the voters. In the article this argument is investigated empirically, based on CMP data from 18 West European countries from 1980 to 2014. The findings largely support the argument and show a strong potential for further integration of the two dominant perspectives on party competition.     

Issue convergence or issue divergence in a political campaign?

In this article, a two-party contest where candidates allocate their campaign resources strategically between two salient issues is studied. The analysis aims to determine the circumstances under which there is issue convergence (both parties emphasizing the same issue) or issue divergence (different parties emphasizing different issues) during a political campaign. For this purpose, the concepts of a party’s absolute and comparative advantage are used. A party has an absolute advantage on an issue if a majority of voters prefer its position on this issue to that of its opponent. A party has a comparative advantage on an issue if the percentage of votes that it would obtain if voters cared only about that issue is larger than those that it would obtain if voters cared only about the other issue. It is shown here that issue convergence can occur only if one of the parties has an absolute advantage on both issues, but its comparative advantage is not too large. Otherwise, there will be issue divergence in the political campaign.     

Issue competition in Western Europe: an introduction

Abstract

The special issue introduced in this article presents the results of the Issue Competition Comparative Project (ICCP). The project uses issue yield theory to provide a general, comprehensive perspective on issue competition (party competition through issue strategy) that goes beyond the extant focus on specific parties or specific issues. Relying on voter surveys and Twitter data collected in the context of recent elections in six West European countries, we address several key research questions concerning issue competition: (a) whether the strategies of different parties are loyal to classic 20th-century ideological alignments or rather actively challenging them; (b) whether different parties opt for conflict-mobilization or problem-solving issue strategic approaches; (c) whether party adherence to the issue opportunities identified by issue yield theory are rewarded by better electoral performance.     

Stronger core,weaker fringes: the Danish general election 2019

Abstract

The 2015–2019 election period was long; hence, the election campaign had already begun when the Prime Minister called the election for 5 June 2019, just 10 days after the EP election. Nine already established parties, one old yet unrepresented party and three new parties, two of which are (very) opposed to immigration, fielded candidates across the 10 electoral districts for the 175 seats in parliament (excluding the four MPs elected in Greenland and the Faroe Islands). The overlapping EP election, climate and immigration characterised the campaign agenda. One of the new (anti-immigration) parties made it into parliament, and among the established parties, some were (more than) halved, others were (more than) doubled and some remained stable. In particular, the two government (supporting) parties, Liberal Alliance and Danish People’s Party, received a slap in the face from the electorate. While the Prime Minister’s party, the Liberals, did well, the majority shifted to left of centre, which resulted in a minority Social Democratic government headed by Mette Frederiksen, supported by the Red?Green Alliance, Socialist People’s Party and Social Liberals.     

Campaigning on behalf of the party? Party constraints on candidate campaign personalisation

This article analyses what makes political candidates run a party‐focused or personalised election campaign. Prior work shows that candidates face incentives from voters and the media to personalise their campaign rhetoric and promises at the expense of party policy. This has raised concerns about the capacity of parties to govern effectively and voters’ ability to hold individual politicians accountable. This article builds on the literature on party organisation and considers the possible constraints candidates face from their party in personalising their election campaigns. Specifically, it is argued that party control over the candidate nomination process and campaign financing constrains most political candidates in following electoral incentives for campaign personalisation. Using candidate survey data from the 2009 EP election campaign in 27 countries, the article shows how candidates from parties in which party officials exerted greater control over the nomination process and campaign finances were less likely to engage in personalised campaigning at the expense of the party programme. The findings imply that most parties, as central gatekeepers and resource suppliers, hold important control mechanisms for countering the electoral pressure for personalisation and advance our understanding of the incentives and constraints candidates face when communicating with voters. The article discusses how recent democratic reforms, paradoxically, might induce candidate personalisation with potential negative democratic consequences.     

Making sense of party strategy innovation: challenge to ideology and conflict-mobilisation as dimensions of party competition

Abstract

This article develops a pooled comparative analysis aimed at addressing two of the three overarching research questions of the special issue. It first discuss an ‘end of ideology’ research question: that is, whether party constituencies and party strategy show clear challenges to classic twentieth century ideological alignments. Second, it investigates the type of issue strategy that parties employ in this new ideological environment, expecting mainstream parties to stress a problem-solving approach, while challenger parties should favour a conflict-mobilisation strategy. Finally, the article combines these two fundamental dimensions (ideological consistency; reliance on problem-solving vs. conflict-mobilisation strategies) in order to identify party strategy innovations in current West European elections.     

Appearing moderate or radical? Radical left party success and the two-dimensional political space

Abstract

Challenger parties’ electoral successes have attracted increasing scholarly attention. Based on the example of West European radical left parties, this article investigates whether and how centripetal and centrifugal positional movements on different conflict dimensions influence the election results of these parties. Depending on parties’ issue-linkages, these strategies will have a different effect for the economic and the non-economic issue dimension. Due to radical left parties’ long-term commitment and a strong party-issue linkage on economic issues, more moderate positions will play to their electoral advantage. In contrast, far-left parties compete with social democratic and green-libertarian parties for party-issue linkages on the non-economic issue dimension. Here, they benefit from promoting centrifugal strategies. Based on time-series cross-section analyses for 25 West European far-left parties between 1990 and 2017, the empirical results show that the success of radical left parties’ positional strategies varies with the conflict dimension in question and that this effect is only partly moderated by the positions of competing mainstream left parties.