Title
Parties’ issue strategies on the drawing board: the 2017 Austrian case
Author
Abstract
Parties may rely on different issue agendas when tailoring their electoral campaigns in an attempt to win elections. This paper compares two key party issue strategies to examine which one the victorious Austrian Peoples’ Party (ÖVP) relied on the most during the 2017 Austrian election campaign vis-à-vis its main competitors. These two key party strategies are the ‘riding-the-wave’ model, which posits that parties focus on issues that currently concern voters the most and the recent ‘issue-yield model’, which instead suggests that parties adopt strategic behaviour targeting all those issues with genuine opportunities for electoral expansion. It is found that, compared to the other main parties in the 2017 Austrian election campaign, the ÖVP was the one most clearly relying on the issue-yield approach. These results have important implications for our understanding of electoral campaigns, party’s exploitation of issue strategies, and voter representation beyond the Austrian case.
Keywords
Systemic saliencyissue-yield modelelection campaignparty issue strategyAustria
Object type
Language
English [eng]
Persistent identifier
Appeared in
Title
West European Politics
Volume
43
Issue
3
From page
639
To page
664
Publication
Informa UK Limited
Version type
Date issued
2019
Access rights
Rights statement
© 2019 The Author(s)
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