Campaign Communication and Strategic Responses to Change in the Electoral Environment

Abstract

This study presents a priming model of party competition which proposes that broad-based parties adapt their campaign communication to respond strategically to changes in their electoral environment. Party competition during election campaigns is seen as the struggle to `prime' the electorate; i.e. to set the electorate's agenda and the criteria for which the electorate will evaluate the parties. This model is used to analyze the strategic responses of the two broad-based parties in Germany - the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the German Social Democratic Party (SPD) - to the changes in their electoral environment after reunification. Survey data are used to analyze differences in the East and West German electorate after reunification and a content analysis of the television commercials broadcast by the two parties is used to discern the changing content (i.e. issue dimensions, candidate-orientated appeals) and form (i.e. degree of attack, issue differentiation technique and temporal reference) of campaign communication. This analysis indicates that the nature of party competition in a given party system is not fixed but changes as parties make strategic responses to their electoral environment.