The digital platform has deeply changed the electoral campaigns, producing a consequent evolution of political consulting. Social networks have become the mainstream media so that the digital strategist and the big data analysts have achieved a special place in the "war room," next to the campaign director and the pollster. In 2012, Obama's election has marked the entrance in the "Fast Politics": resulting, on one hand, in 24 hours news, a large amount of auto-generated contents produced by the voters through digital media, fragmentation, instantaneous transmission of messages and, on the other hand, a reduction of the attention threshold. Once again, similarly to the past, the evolution of the media (2.0) ends up changing the nature of election campaigns and political consulting request. What happens in Europe? The objective is to carry out a comparative analysis on the professionalization of candidates' electoral staff. We wanted to verify if the American model has been imported in Europe with special focus on the techniques and the style of election campaigns management. In particular, within a comparative approach among the European states, the study analyzed the usage of political consulting and the degree of "digitalization" during last general elections: an ancillary practice or, on the contrary, a new tool for consensus? The comparative analysis among European states exploited the data provided by Comparative Candidates Survey (CCS 2013) and constructed synthetic indexes on the professionalization and digitization campaigns, conducting a quantitative and qualitative analysis.

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The demand for specific expertise to manage strategically election campaigns is growing. However, their use depends on the history of political party, on their values and on their economic resources and to the context in which the election campaign takes place. In this sphere, the electoral system produces constraints and incentives for the development of the electoral campaigns.This study aims to examine the influence of electoral system on electoral campaign style and on its management. In particular, the focus is on professionalization and personalization of electoral campaigns within a comparative approach among the European states. The data are from a comparative study on candidates (CCS).The study focuses on the candidates who participated in the most recent general elections included in the database. In particular, we selected nine countries with different electoral systems: for Candidate-based electoral system, we choice Romania, United Kingdom, Ireland and Malta; for Party-based electoral system, we examined Norway, Portugal and Italy; we also included in our analysis Hungary and Germany, which have a Mixed system with single-member constituency and closed List, which can be placed between the two previous systems.The results of the study show that the electoral systems influence the election campaigns of candidates, producing different models of mobilization.