To the Advantage of the Big Parties but They Seem to Lose Interest—TV Advertising During the 2002 German National Election Campaign

Abstract

Since the introduction of commercial broadcasting in Germany during the 1980s, parties are allowed to purchase airtime in addition to the free airtime they receive on public channels. This has led to an increasing disadvantage for the smaller parties. In addition to the fact that a graded system of allocation of airtime is applied for ads on public TV and small parties receive fewer slots than their big competitors, they cannot afford to buy extra airtime. Comparisons of style and content of the party ads further show that the bigger parties produce highly professional ads while the broadcasts of smaller parties are often unprofessional and almost home-style. While the spots allow unknown parties to receive the attention of the audience, their unprofessional offerings might work to their disadvantage. While the ads of the 2002 electoral campaign have confirmed these developments, analyses of the ads of the big parties at the same time hint at a growing disenchantment with the ads as a campaign channel. Even the big parties tend to invest less money in their TV campaign than in former campaigns, which at least partly seems to be due to unfavorable conditions for electoral advertising on TV. This paper presents findings from analyses of the party ads in 2002 which are compared with findings from a long-term analysis which covers the elections since 1957, the first year in which party ads were shown on German TV.     

Vested Interests

SUMMARY

Interest groups are key players in contemporary campaigns and elections. Along with candidates and political parties, interest groups invest heavily in attempting to influence the outcomes of electoral contests, including presidential races. While scholars have investigated the resource allocation strategies of presidential candidates, little is known about how interest groups distribute resources in presidential campaigns. This study examines spending on political advertising in the 2000 presidential election and compares interest groups' resource allocation decisions to those of the candidates' organizations and the national political parties. The findings reveal that, although interest groups are numerous, disconnected and geographically dispersed, these entities—in the aggregate—adopt allocation strategies similar to those of candidates and parties.     

Models of Voter Behavior in Traditional and Evolving Democracies

ABSTRACT

The data of Polish, Slovenian, and U.S. political elections have been analyzed according to Newman's model of voter's choice behavior (Newman & Sheth 1985; Newman 1999). The results of the research were interpreted with the methodology of structural equations, where cognitive domains, the media, and the emotional feelings toward the candidates were variables in mutual cause-and-effect relationships. The results of the analyses demonstrated the differences in the importance of the media for the election process. In established democracies like in the U.S. the media play an important role as independent means of delivering information, while in evolving democracies media are not independent and are oftentimes used by the competing political sides as an element in electoral battles. The article also presents proposals for studying voter behaviors within constructivist and realistic paradigms as well as some suggestions for marketing practice.     

US Presidential Elections: Two Centuries of Constitutional Continuity and Political Change—With an Analysis of the Political Geography of Barack Obama's Re‐election Campaign

The system for electing the President of the United States remains essentially as it was prescribed in the Federal Constitution drafted in 1787. The individual 50 states (plus the District of Columbia) are accorded a number of votes in the (so‐called) Electoral College; each state's Electoral College vote is then attributed to the candidate gaining a plurality (most) of the popular vote in that state; and the candidate with a majority (50% + 1) of these aggregated Electoral College votes is declared the incoming president. What has changed have been the methods of nominating the candidates, chief of which are the political parties from the nineteenth century with their stage‐managed quadrennial conventions and the primary/caucus campaigns from the twentieth century which precede and now determine the formal nomination. President Obama's 2012 re‐election campaign showed both the crucial importance of the much‐maligned Electoral College in winning the presidency and the demographic divisions hidden in the larger American political landscape.     

Mission Accomplished: The Wartime Election of 2004

The war in Iraq, so the widely accepted view, hurt the reelection of George W. Bush. We contend, to the contrary, that the war helped him get reelected. First, we show that his victory fits the dominant pattern of wartime elections in American history. Second, we find that Bush’s approval ratings benefited from a complex rally where the Iraq war prolonged rather than diminished the 9/11 effect; most Americans affirmed rather than disputed a link between the war in Iraq and the war on terror. Third, while Bush’s approval proves sensitive to U.S. casualties in the Iraq war, any damage to his standing prior to the election was mitigated by sufficient popular support for that war. And finally, on Election Day, Bush was able to garner the vote of two critical blocks with favorable feelings about the Iraq war, be it the decision to invade or the prospect of success.

Fear in the Voting Booth: The 2004 Presidential Election

Every presidential election offers interesting questions for analysis, but some elections are more puzzling than others. The election of 2004 involves two linked and countervailing puzzles. The first is: How did President George W. Bush manage to win at all, avoiding the fates of George H.W. Bush and Jimmy Carter? The other is: Why didn’t he win by a more substantial margin than in his first election, as all reelected presidents since Eisenhower were able to do? On the one hand, in the wake of September 11, the president had approval ratings around 90% and the threat of terrorism remained a substantial concern through Election Day. This would seem to afford Bush an overwhelming advantage. On the other hand, the public’s views of the state of the economy and of the course of the war in Iraq were negative. We think that the juxtaposition of these questions will help to explain the outcome of the election and of the pattern of the results. Moreover, by unpacking our explanation of the vote into three policy-related issue components—economic retrospective evaluations, domestic policy views, and foreign policy views—we examine the way these preferences contributed to the electorate’s voting decisions.     

Electoral Democracy during Wartime: The 2004 U.S. Election

The U.S. election of 2004 affords an opportunity to investigate how wartime affects presidential voting. The conventional wisdom is that wartime presidents always get reelected, but previous studies have not examined how citizens' attitudes on the war affect their voting. The papers in this special issue investigate this process, looking at how attitudes on the Iraq War, the larger War on Terrorism, and the so-called cultural war affected attitudes toward the presidential candidates and voting. The studies use a wide variety of datasets and survey questions, showing that the different aspects of the war resonate with different voters and that some of the effects of wartime are indirect through increasing the salience of leadership in the election. Wartime presidents do not get reelected automatically; they have had success in reelection because of how they use the war to build an image that can get them reelected.

列宁论法官的选任

作为国家司法机构的法院和法院职能执行者的法官是基于阶级的分化、社会分工和纠纷解决的需要而产生的。进入社会主义，社会主体之间的利益之争仍然客观存在，有纷争就需要有承担裁判案件和定纷止争使命的法官。作为社会主义事业的开创者，列宁对于社会主义法官存在的必要性以及法官的任职资格、任职形式和任职期限作了详细的论述。列宁认为，作为国家专门裁决纠纷的职业阶层，法官在社会主义阶段仍然有其存在的历史必要性；法官应当是从人民群众中选举出的具有法律专业知识和实际修养的职业阶层；为了防止法官专断和擅权，主张废除法官终身制，实行社会主义的法官任期制。     

A Semicolon,Not a Full Stop

正Ukraine’s new president faces big challenges in managing both domestic affairs and relations with Russia Ukrainian candy tycoon Petro Poroshenko’s presidential election victory was unsurpris-ing.What did come as a surprise,however,was that it happened in     

完善党内民主选举的保障机制

实现并完善党内选举是推进党内民主的基础环节和根本体现，是以党内民主带动人民民主的内在要求。完善党内民主选举的保障机制是由条件保障机制、制度保障机制和程序保障机制组成的多层次复合结构。在党内选举实践中，积极建构并完善“多维一体”的保障机制并使之发挥积极作用，是增强党内选举成效、实现党的建设科学化、全面推进党的建设伟大工程的内在要求。