Party competition during the German federal election campaign 2021 was marked by major external events and remarkable shifts in poll ratings. Existing literature argues that parties adjust their communication to such changing contexts and proposes three strategies: parties can respond to other...

Das komplexer gewordene bundesdeutsche Parteiensystem und die Angleichung in der Stärke der Parteien bei Wahlen führt zu einem ebenfalls komplexeren Koalitions- und Regierungsbildungsprozess auf Bundes- wie Landesebene. Diese Kurzanalyse präsentiert die programmatischen Profile der im...

Competition between political parties is a process that unfolds over time whereas formal theories of party competition have tended to take an essentially static, or one-shot, approach. This leaves some gaps in our understanding of the dynamics of campaigning. The aim of this paper is to make up...

Political parties respond strategically to the electoral success of radical right populist parties (RRPPs). While previous research has focused on programmatic responses on cultural conflict issues, we are expanding the research on policy position adaption to the economic left-right issue of...

This article demonstrates that the issue-yield concept is able to predict the electoral strategies of mainstream and challenger parties at the 2017 German federal election. While the electorate of mainstream parties favour valence issues, the Greens and the AfD can gain more by concentrating on...

Challenger parties’ electoral successes have attracted increasing scholarly attention. Based on the example of West European radical left parties, this article investigates whether and how centripetal and centrifugal positional movements on different conflict dimensions influence the election...

Political parties are often argued to compete for voters by stressing issues they feel they own - a strategy known as 'selective emphasis'. While usually seen as an electorally rewarding strategy, this article argues that cultivating your themes in the public debate is not guaranteed to be...