Election campaign
In the narrower sense, an election campaign is the direct bidding of parties or candidates for votes from eligible voters before an election . In a broader sense, most of the behavior of parties or candidates before an election can be attributed to the election campaign. In Germany, one speaks of permanent election campaigns when elections take place very often in one of the federal states and this paralyzes factual policy. A scientific discussion takes place in particular with the individual voting behavior of the citizens as well as the special communication of the parties in the election campaign. Election campaigns nowadays often take the form of campaigns .
function
Election campaigns are usually aimed at both their own sympathizers and those who are undecided. Members and supporters of their own party should, with increased motivation, create a snowball effect in their environment with actions and word of mouth . On the other hand, the election campaign is intended to provide undecided voters with arguments and encourage them to vote. Last but not least, volunteer poster stickers, leaflet distributors and meeting speakers help save party money. As traditional ties to parties decline, the election campaign in the media is becoming increasingly important.
History and forms
- Direct election campaigns: Forms and means of direct election campaigns are in particular public speeches, information stands in public places and in pedestrian zones or personal addresses by the candidates by the candidates through so-called “cleaning the door”. The communication of (short) texts from the loudspeaker of a car driving in residential areas, which was still widespread in the 1980s, is hardly used anymore; The effect of distributing smaller gifts at voting booths (pens, stickers, balloons and the like) is controversial, but is still used to facilitate discussions with potential voters.
- Classic mass media: Election campaign techniques that use the mass media are called indirect forms. This includes election programs , leaflets , election posters , election newspapers , campaign hits , press releases and letters to the editor .
Quotation from the handbook of party work - handbook for work in local social democratic associations from the 1970s: “In the context of the public, letters to the editor have a special function. The columns with the expressions of opinion of the readers are sometimes the only way to get into a sheet that has not been weighed by the SPD ... The press officer may ... ask for it. This is not intended to speak to an indiscriminate terror of opinion through staged mass broadcasts. If, however, a wrong picture of our positions is conveyed to the public through abbreviated presentations of social democratic politics, letters to the editor - even if they are not all published - can correct the picture. "
- Electronic mass media: The electronic mass media in particular have changed the election campaign. A change in campaign conduct has been observed in recent years. While the traditional election campaign, especially in Germany, was carried out for the most part by simple party members and concentrated on local advertising, the importance of the mass media is increasing . At the same time, it is stated that the election campaign is becoming more and more professional , that is , is being looked after by professional advertising agencies , and that the personalization is mainly limited to individual top candidates (see also Americanization ). The election campaign of Bill Clinton in 1992 or that of Tony Blair in 1997 are cited as exemplary examples . In Germany, the election campaign of the SPD , which was supervised by the Kampa campaign center, was described as a significant change in campaign management prior to the 1998 federal election. For the first time there were rallies with infotainment, moderators such as Frank Buschmann , Holger Pfandt or Peter Kunz, panel discussions and music acts. To what extent these tendencies actually take place and to what extent they change voting behavior is highly controversial in the political science literature. Since then, the election campaign has been taking place with commercials and television debates (including TV duels ), on the radio and on the Internet. In Germany, private and public broadcasters have special legal regulations governing the broadcasting of election commercials . According to this, the broadcasters may only reject adverts submitted by parties in the prescribed length in exceptional cases, for example in the case of unconstitutional content. There are more or less subtle influences “behind the scenes” by so-called spin doctors .
Election campaign on the Internet
Internet election campaigns refer to the implementation or support of election campaigns using the special possibilities of the Internet . This includes addressing voters , volunteers , donors and multipliers , for example via email newsletters , websites or blogs .
Internet election campaigns can perform certain tasks better than others in the communications mix of an election campaign. The self-selection process on the Internet makes it very difficult for example to reach voters who are not interested in politics. While these voters would hardly avoid a 30-second TV spot, for example, they would have to look for information about the campaign on the Internet or subscribe to the newsletter. Election campaigns on the Internet must therefore be geared towards those target groups that can be reached particularly well on the Internet:
“The average user of politicians' websites is male, educated and under 50 years of age. He has a comparatively high income, is internet savvy and prefers freedom to security and equality. His interest in politics is great and he considers himself very competent politically. He has developed an inclination towards a certain party and spends a comparatively high proportion of his entire online time on political activities. "
The Internet makes it easier to include the political base in the election campaign. Some campaigns even pursue a distinct bottom-up approach instead of the traditional top-down approach. This was particularly pronounced in the campaign of Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean in the 2003/2004 primaries . Similar to a grassroots movement , the content of the Dean campaign was co-designed and controlled by the political base and also financed primarily through many small individual donations. The Dean campaign was always in close dialogue with the political base via its campaign blog and responded to ideas from user comments. In the course of this campaign, the term open source was first introduced in a campaign context.
Howard Dean managed to mobilize a large number of volunteers over the Internet and in a quarter of a year raised the record sum of 15 million US dollars in donations. Howard Dean's campaign became the model for modern internet election campaigns. While the internet election campaign has already achieved great importance in the USA , its potential in Germany was not yet fully exploited in the federal election campaigns of 2005 and 2009 either.
see also: Twitter # election campaign in Germany
Types of campaign messages
Personal messages
Personal election campaign messages are aimed at the top staff of the party and especially the future office holder. This focus reduces the complexity of factual issues and institutional decisions to one person. Election campaigns that mainly rely on personal messages are also known as personal election campaigns. The political scientist Werner Wolf formulated it in 1980 as The Spitzenkandidat embodies the programs, goals and concerns of his party during the election campaign. He makes politics understandable for the citizen. In Germany, this is particularly noticeable in the role that the candidate for chancellor plays in the election campaign, but similar processes can also be observed among the top candidates from smaller parties or the candidates for the office of prime minister .
Thematic messages
The topic-related campaign messages focus particularly on the political fields with which a party or a candidate tries to position itself positively. The fields are selected according to the criteria of whether they are perceived as particularly problematic or particularly important by the electorate and whether the candidate or party enjoys a particularly high level of competence in the population. If a topic is perceived as important by the population, it is particularly important for the parties to interpret this topic in such a way that it appears like a topic in which the party is considered particularly competent. A classic example from federal politics would be the problem of unemployment, which Black and Yellow would interpret as an economic policy issue, but primarily as a social policy issue by the SPD, since the parties were considered particularly competent here. In the 1998 Bundestag election campaign, however, the SPD managed to see the issue as an economic policy issue and still win the election.
Party-related messages
Party- related campaign messages relate to the party as a whole and to the image it tries to form of itself during the campaign. For the parties it is important, on the one hand, to be seen as particularly competent, and on the other hand, an important ideological positioning takes place here. Well known here in the Federal Republic are, for example, the freedom instead of socialism campaign of the CDU in Adenauer's time, the Safe in the Future campaign of the CDU in the 1994 federal election , in which the Red Socks campaign in particular came into play, or we are -ready -Campaign of the SPD in the Bundestag election 1998. According to the model of the median voter , parties tend to be in the middle of society in the election campaign.
Campaign Promise: Lies and Truth
Politicians are not legally bound by what they promise in the election campaign. They are available for election as persons who, after the election, are free, only committed to their conscience , can participate in political decisions in the Bundestag:
Art. 38 para. 1 GG:
“The members of the German Bundestag are elected in general, direct, free, equal and secret elections. They are representatives of the whole people, not bound by orders and instructions and only subject to their conscience. "
There are a few suggestions that politicians should conclude contracts with the people before the elections. For example, the Freiburg history professor Wolfgang Reinhard countered : "If you want to avoid political suicide, you have no choice but to lie ... Politics can never be pursued without deception and intrigue."
The timing of election messages
Each party must observe other parties during the election campaign and respond to their statements as well as the corresponding reaction of the majority of voters in order to be able to react skillfully again with election tactics. As a result, the timing of each election message plays a major role along with the content. Mathematical-strategic methods are also used as an alternative to intuitive strategies based on tact. In practice, however, every method must be user-friendly and therefore sufficiently simple. An example is a flexible method based on the odds strategy for finding optimal solutions.
Reimbursement of election costs
Reimbursement of election campaign costs is an important part of state funding for parties . In order to be accepted into this, a party in Germany must achieve 0.5% of the votes in a nationwide election or 1% of the votes in state elections.
Where there is no state funding, parties have to raise very high donations for an effective election campaign , for example in the USA .
See also
- Opinion poll
- Opinion polling
- Microtargeting
- Election research
- Policy marketing
- image
- public relations
- Strategy 18 ( Guidomobil )
- Median selector
- Campaign manager
- Federal Election Act
- Election campaign in Japan
- Asymmetrical demobilization
Sections on special election campaigns in the Federal Republic of Germany
literature
- Silvano Moeckli: This is how election campaigns work. UTB 4868, UVK, Konstanz 2017, ISBN 978-3-8252-4868-0
- Peter Brück: "Election advertising on the radio" Springer VS, Wiesbaden 2014, ISBN 978-3-658-03926-4 .
- Christina Holtz-Bacha: "Election advertising as political culture: Party spots on television 1957-1998" Westdeutscher Verlag 2000, ISBN 978-3-663-11805-3
- Andreas Jungherr, Harald Schoen: "The Internet in Election Campaigns: Concepts, Effects and Campaign Functions." Springer VS, Wiesbaden 2013, ISBN 978-3-658-01012-6 .
- Thomas Knieper, Marion G. Müller (Ed.): Visual election campaign communication. Herbert von Halem, Cologne 2004, ISBN 3-931606-74-0 .
- Thomas Mergel: Election campaign history as cultural history. Conceptual considerations and empirical examples . In: Barbara Stollberg-Rilinger (Hrsg. :): What does cultural history of the political mean? Münster 2005, pp. 255-276. ISBN 3-428-11868-5
- Florian Melchert, Fabian Magerl, Mario Voigt (eds.): In the middle of the campaign. Grassroots and mobilization in the 2005 Bundestag election campaign. Poli-c-books, Berlin / Munich 2006, ISBN 3-938456-07-8 .
- Manuel Merz, Stefan Rhein (ed.): Election campaign on the Internet. 2nd, revised and expanded edition. Lit, Münster 2009, ISBN 978-3-8258-9262-3 ( Public Affairs and Political Management , Volume 9).
- Nicole Podschuweit: Effects of election advertising. Attention strength, memory, processing and decision relevance. R. Fischer, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-88927-422-9 .
- Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann, Hans M. Kepplinger, Wolfgang Donsbach (eds.): Kampa. Opinion climate and media effects in the federal election campaign 1998. Alber, Freiburg / Munich 2000, ISBN 3-495-47981-3 ( Alber series communication , volume 25).
- Kerstin Reinisch: Choice without knowledge? Empirical analysis on the depoliticization of election campaign reporting in German print media. Nomos, Baden-Baden 2017, ISBN 978-3-8487-4060-4 .
- Frank Stauss: Hell ride election campaign. An inside report. Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, Munich 2013, ISBN 978-3-423-24986-7 .
- Werner Wolf: The election campaign. Theory and practice. Federal Agency for Civic Education, Cologne 1980, ISBN 3-8046-8572-2 .
- Executive Board of the SPD, Dept. Public Relations (publisher): Party work - manual for work in local social democratic associations - press work. Printing: Druckhaus Bayreuth (undated).
- What the voting decision depends on: Wahl-o-Mat instead of a chancellor duel . In: Forschungs Aktuell , 250, 34th year of September 12, 2013; Future Issues Foundation - a British American Tobacco initiative.
Movies
- Slogans and polemics - the history of German election advertising films, documentary film, 112 minutes, tacker film . Trailer .
Web links
- Wahl-O-Mat Popular program comparison of the Federal Agency for Civic Education
- Wahlplakate-Archiv.de - Election posters from election campaigns in the Weimar Republic
Individual evidence
- ↑ Kampa from below FAZ.net, June 25, 2005, accessed on February 20, 2014.
- ↑ Manuel Merz: Target groups of the online election campaign. Helpers, donors, opinion leaders and other target groups in detail. ( Page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In: Manuel Merz, Stefan Rhein, Julia Vetter: Election campaign on the Internet. Online Political Campaign Guide. Public Affairs and Political Management 9. Lit Verlag, Münster 2006, ISBN 3-8258-9262-X , pp. 33–42
- ↑ Manuel Merz: User of politician homepages. The population group that can be practically reached in the online election campaign. ( Page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In: Manuel Merz, Stefan Rhein, Julia Vetter: Election campaign on the Internet. Online Political Campaign Guide. Public Affairs and Political Management 9. Lit Verlag, Münster 2006, ISBN 3-8258-9262-X , pp. 25–32
- ↑ Joe Trippi: The Revolution Will Not Be Televised. Democracy, the Internet, and the Overthrow of Everything. HarperCollins, New York 2004, ISBN 0-06-076155-5
- ^ Gary Wolf: How the Internet Invented Howard Dean. In: Wired. 1/12/2004, The Condé Nast Publications, ISSN 1059-1028
- ↑ Web election campaign: at the grassroots . Electric reporter. September 18, 2009 (video podcast; 10:52 min.)
- ↑ Serious politicians should make contracts with the people. (PDF) In: NZZ . Hans Gersbach, August 25, 2007, accessed December 21, 2014 .
- ↑ "Politicians have to lie". Freiburg history professor Wolfgang Reinhard in the taz , July 10, 2009, accessed on December 21, 2014 .
