Campaigning on an Upper Level? Individual Campaigning in the 2009 European Parliament Elections in its Determinants

Electoral Studies
,
vi, 53-66 S.
,
2011,

Giebler, Heiko, Andreas M. Wüst
ISSN: 0261-3794

Election campaigns are not only party campaigns, but depend to a significant degree on the efforts and activities of individual candidates. While some country-specific analyses of candidate campaigning have been done, large-N comparative studies are missing. The 2009 European Election Candidate Study, conducted in all 27 EU countries, does allow for such a comparative analysis. On the basis of this data, the article takes a closer look at three core components of individual campaigns and their respective determinants: duration, intensity, and the use of different campaign tools. Our findings show that only a combination of factors on the individual, party, and country level is able to explain significant amounts of the observed variance in each of the core components.