Political campaigns exist so that electoral candidates and parties can pursue votes, but what
explains their content? It is clear that a lot of thought (and a lot more money) go into election
campaigns, but the issues political actors focus on and those that they avoid are not well
understood. In this paper we consider the responsiveness of the 2009 German Federal election
campaigns to public priorities expressed through the “most important problem” survey
question. Through the use of time series models of daily media reports of campaigns and
rolling cross-section survey data on the attitudes of individual voters we find evidence that the
2009 German Federal election campaigns were responsive to public priorities and the
attention of opposition campaigns. However, the focus of the campaign on the party or an
individual candidate led to more and less responsiveness respectively. These results suggest
that political campaigns dynamically respond to public opinion and each other, but that the
nature of the campaign can lead to drastic changes in the level of responsiveness exhibited.
