Suchergebnisse

Electoral campaigns are conducted by parties & candidates to convince the people to turn out to vote & to vote for them instead of voting for a competitor. In parliamentary democracies, & especially in those that apply electoral systems of proportional representation with closed party lists, parties & their top candidates for prime minister or for chancellor are considered to be the main actors in campaigns. Consequently, electoral campaigns are primarily party campaigns which are neither won nor lost by any 'average' candidate. Parties structure the electoral competition by collectively emphasising certain issues & by presenting a rather cohesive ideological perspective in a campaign. Further, candidates & elected MPs are first & foremost representatives of their parties with very limited personal room for political manoeuvre. While this assessment is not challenged in principle, we argue that it cuts too short. In addition to parties, candidates play important roles in electoral campaigns, & due to the modernisation of parties & campaigns, we expect a substantial degree of personalised campaigning which is likely to increase in the future. Given the particular mixed-member electoral system used to elect the German Bundestag, we are able to differentiate the campaign of pure constituency candidates, pure list candidates & the most frequent hybrids who ran for office both in a constituency & on a party list in 2005. Tables. Adapted from the source document.