Do campaign strategies and tactics matter? Exploring party elite perceptions of what matters when explaining election outcomes

Abstract

In research on political campaign communication, it is often assumed that campaign strategies and tactics are highly important for explaining election outcomes. In contrast, most research in political science tends to emphasize the importance of political substance, long‐term factors such as party identification, and real‐world conditions for explaining election outcomes. Although political parties in practice treat election campaigns as highly important and consequential, there is virtually no research on how party elites perceive the importance of campaign strategies and tactics when explaining election outcomes. Hence, drawing on a survey among Swedish members of parliament, this study investigates party elite perceptions of what matters when people decide which party to vote for and of what matters when explaining election outcomes. In brief, the results show that members of parliament perceive campaign strategies and tactics as significantly less important than the substance of politics. In the concluding analysis, the implications of the results are analyzed. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Long‐term policymaking and politicians' beliefs about voters: Evidence from a 3‐year panel study of politicians

“…Here, we show that politicians do vary substantially in their approaches to inter‐temporal policy dilemmas, even when the character of the policy choice and their institutional and electoral environments are very similar. We argue that these preferences are driven by politicians' theories of voters (Ekengren & Oscarsson, 2011; Kingdon, 1967; Lucas et al., 2022; Strömbäck et al., 2013), and more specifically by whether politicians see voters as more oriented toward the short term or the long term in their voting behavior. In our view, politicians have beliefs about how voters behave and what voters expect them to do, which provide a backdrop for their own policy choices as representatives.…”

“…theories of voters (Ekengren & Oscarsson, 2011;Kingdon, 1967;Lucas et al, 2022;Strömbäck et al, 2013), and more specifically by whether politicians see voters as more oriented toward the short term or the long term in their voting behavior. In our view, politicians have beliefs about how voters behave and what voters expect them to do, which provide a backdrop for their own policy choices as representatives.…”

Where you lead we will follow: a longitudinal study of strategic political communication in election campaigning

“…Imitation can be defined as a process in which something is created and transformed by chains of translators (Sevón, ), and the suggestion that organizations frequently imitate the ideas and practices of each other is widely accepted in the literature (Barreto & Baden Fuller, ; DiMaggio & Powell, ; Haunschild & Miner, ; Ordanini, Rubera & DeFillippi, ). According to Sahlin and Wedlin (), actors imitate ideas or practices to which they ascribe new meanings and combine them with the existing working models in order to make them fit to the local context of the organization (Sahlin & Wedlin, ). In that sense, the ideas that are spread through fashions are not unchangeable goods, but rather subject to multiple translations or re‐contextualization in light of the local setting of the organization (Czarniawska & Joerges, ).…”