Search

We examine how political parties use advertising on Facebook and Instagram to compete over policy issues in the 2021 German federal election. Using data from the Meta Ad Library, we apply a semi-supervised topic model to examine how parties’ issue attention differs between parties and over time. We find that most parties focus on owned issues in their advertising campaigns, but also engage in rival parties’ issues to larger degrees than expected. The extent to which parties emphasize owned issues throughout the campaign is related to ideological positions, targeting sophistication, and the roles social media played in overall campaign strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Babylon Center for Humanities Studies is the property of Republic of Iraq Ministry of Higher Education & Scientific Research (MOHESR) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Geschichte für heute is the property of Wochenschau Verlag GmbH and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Awareness-raising campaigns are frequently disseminated on social networks such as Instagram. In light of the need to raise awareness about gender-based violence, this study seeks to ascertain the extent to which Instagram users replicate the official campaigns on this issue. To this end, a case study was conducted on the images disseminated on Instagram with the hashtag #AhoraYaEspañaEsOtra. The findings indicate that the accounts utilising the hashtag tend to disseminate official campaign images. Furthermore, it appears that the general public is not significantly engaged with the utilisation of the hashtag, as it is predominantly employed by accounts affiliated with the government entity spearheading the campaign. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Voters' perception of how satisfied they are with the work of the incumbent government is decisive for their voting decision, with satisfaction in most cases leading to support for the incumbent government and dissatisfaction leading to votes against it. This article is not about exploring the relationship between satisfaction with the incumbent party's performance and voting for it. The main objective is to identify the factors that contribute to voter satisfaction. What aspects of the incumbent government's performance or policy influence their positive assessment? Considering the election campaigns and prominent issues leading up to the elections and drawing insights from existing literature, this analysis examines the potential determinants of voter satisfaction. It aims to identify how these factors explain voter satisfaction or dissatisfaction. The findings reveal that voter satisfaction with the incumbent government during the 2024 Lok Sabha election was mainly influenced by recent and visible accomplishments rather than long-term factors. The construction of the Ram Mandir and positive evaluations of the government's performance on economic issues played a significant role in increasing satisfaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Seminal works have highlighted a growing polarisation regarding the environment, with supporters advocating for immediate emissions reduction and others downplaying or even denying human-caused climate change. Despite this debate, little attention has been focused on how voters' environmental preferences influence their electoral behaviour. Using the metaphor of the 'sleeping giant' from European Union politics literature, the article empirically explores how environmental issue preferences impact voting choices. Analysing stacked data from the 2019 European Election Study, the article examines the phenomenon of environmental issue voting by shifting the unit of analysis from individuals to party-voter dyads. Results reveal that environmental preferences moderately, yet significantly, affect vote choice. This effect is more pronounced among left-leaning voters and in countries where the environmental issue is more salient among the public. Our findings shed light on patterns of environmental preference and their role in European electoral competition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 2024 general election brought about a significant change in the parliamentary balance of power. There has already been much attention devoted to the issues that dominated the national campaign. Using original leaflet data from the OpenElections project, this study extends the focus to explore the issues emphasised in local electoral communications put forward by parties and candidates in their constituency campaigns. The article reveals that the top issues featured in election leaflets were health, the economy and the environment. There is also evidence of considerable variation across parties in terms of the issues emphasised, as well as in the focus of the discussion within issue areas and the keywords they tended to prioritise. These findings suggest that, while political elites recognise the need to engage with the key issues of the campaign, how they engage with an issue depends on many factors, including their own record and/or the perceived shortcomings of their opponent(s). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on political representation suggests that legislative activity is influenced by governing parties' policy emphases in their election campaigns. We argue that populist governments are an exception as they may find it difficult to draft and implement laws on an issue even if it is salient to them. The anti-elitism, people-centrism, and Manichean-discourse nature of populist party platforms significantly alters their ability to legislate on their campaign issues. We test this claim using data on the saliency of governments' immigration policies in their election campaigns and subsequent legislation on immigration. The empirical analysis is based on 14 democratic states from 1998 to 2013. The results support the theory that populist governments will exhibit a relatively weak relationship between their issue emphases in election campaigns and the number of policies they enact on immigration. This research has important implications for our understanding of populism, political representation, and immigration policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Political Science Studies / Studia Politologiczne is the property of University of Warsaw and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article builds on the foundations provided by the History of Parliament Trust, utilising previously unconsidered documents from the papers of the Dukes of Hamilton to chart and analyse the conduct of parliamentary elections in later eighteenth-century Lancaster. It shows that these elections were more contentious than previously thought; the full range of political issues at play in these elections, and the engagement of the freemen electorate with these; and forms of electoral management and organisation in use that were not known in the borough until now. It places these new insights in the context of Lancaster's electoral politics through the long eighteenth-century, and draws out developments in this period that played an important role in the borough's nineteenth-century elections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Turkish Culture & Haci Bektas Veli Research Quarterly is the property of Turkish Cultur & Haci Bektas Veli Research Quarterly and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

We combine two dominant approaches to studying how issues influence elections: one that emphasizes parties' issue positions, and the other parties' issue ownership. Research from the latter approach shows that voters ascribe greater economic competence to right-wing parties. Based on this finding, we argue that parties enhance their economic issue ownership when voters perceive them shifting to the right. In the following step, we show that perceived rightward shifts of parties also lead to subsequent increases in electoral support. We analyze economic ownership survey data and election outcomes in 15 democracies over the period 1986–2015 that supports the expectations that parties' perceived rightward shifts result in increases in economic ownership and subsequent vote shares. We also show that the right-shift vote gains are strongest during recessions when voters prioritize parties' economic competence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article introduces the novel concept of fictional populism, describing the phenomenon of made-up characters created and performed by real individuals. These imaginary political candidates typically employ fiction, humour (in the forms of parody and satire), and self-scandalization to accentuate their (populist) messages. Building on the concept of celebrity populism that explores the mixture of populism with celebrity culture, this study examines the features of fictional populism. It focuses on two case studies from Croatia and one from Serbia. Qualitative content analysis of case studies’ communication on Facebook during election campaigns is conducted with the aim to understand how they blended elements of celebrity and popular culture to emphasize their populist messages. Moreover, the study explores how these fictional candidates addressed real political issues during campaigns. By employing an iterative approach between theory and analysis, the article offers rich portrayals of each candidate’s performances, illuminating their strategic use of fiction, humour, and self-scandalization to emphasize the populist messages and appeal to the people. The study outlines the broader dimensions and elements that characterize specific communication features of fictional populists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For citizens to make well-informed decisions, they require information on diverse policy issues, which, among others, are publicized on political parties' social media accounts. However, as strategic actors, parties carefully weigh which issues to highlight and which to play down, rather than addressing a full range of issues in their campaigns. We investigated the hitherto neglected question of which issue diversity parties prioritize on their social media accounts and which factors influence this choice. We conducted a standardized content analysis of the official Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter accounts of 10 Norwegian parties and their leaders during the 2021 national election campaign. The results of our analyses indicate that issue-related campaign strategies influence parties' issue diversity more systematically than parties' governing/opposition statuses and their choices of social media platforms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In times of declining party identification, political parties need to persuade and mobilize their voters from election to election. Setting topics in such a way that voters are convinced to cast their vote has become an essential prerequisite for success in modern election campaigns. Social media are suitable for this, as parties can set their own topics or highlight the topics most important to the voters and communicate them to a large audience in organic posts or target specific voter groups with ads. While tendencies of issue ownership in posts on Facebook are repeatedly shown empirically, there is a lack of studies investigating which strategies parties follow in their investment decisions on Facebook ads. Based on theoretical expectations derived from the literature about digital political marketing and issue prioritization in election campaigns, this article investigates whether parties communicated consistently on Facebook with regard to the issues they set in organic posts, sponsored posts, and ads during the 2021 German federal election campaign. The results of a manual quantitative content analysis (n = 1,029 posts, n = 1,197 sponsored posts, n = 2,643 ads) show that parties focused on issue ownership in their posts. Still, their investments in sponsored posts and ads followed different strategies. Here, most parties highlighted social policy, contradicting issue ownership for some parties. The article provides novel insights into digital campaigning and discusses the extent to which parties can engage audiences beyond their organic reach within party-affiliated audiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article introduces a special issue on trust in elections. While the number of electoral democracies has grown globally, we are currently experiencing a crisis of electoral trust. Political polarization, social divisions, and the rapid spread of misinformation have all been related to enhanced widespread skepticism about the quality of national elections. The special issue is focused on two central questions: How can we explain variations in trust in elections at the individual and country levels? How does trust in elections shape political behavior? In the introduction essay, we frame the contributions of the special issue, provide descriptive statistics about trust in elections globally, summarize the current state of the literature, and point to avenues for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why do transnational actors choose to campaign on specific issues, and why do they launch campaigns when they do? In this article, we theorize the membership, focus, timing and strategies used in transnational advocacy campaigns as a function of long-standing professional networks between NGOs and individual professional campaigners. Unlike previous scholarship that highlights the role of powerful 'gatekeeper' organizations whose central position within transnational issue-networks allows them to promote or block specific issues, we draw on recent work in organizational sociology to bring into focus a wider transnational community of individuals and organizations whose competition for professional growth and 'issue-control' is crucial in defining the transnational advocacy agenda. In doing so, we qualify existing notions of agenda-setting and gatekeeping in International Relations (IR) scholarship. To illustrate our theory we use a longitudinal network analysis approach, alongside extensive interviews and analysis of primary non-governmental organization (NGO) sources. Our empirical focus is on transnational disarmament advocacy. However, our theoretical analysis has implications for transnational advocacy more broadly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article "Addressing Health Care Cost Growth -- Why and How States Should Lead" published in the New England Journal of Medicine discusses the importance of states taking the lead in addressing health care cost growth. It highlights the establishment of agencies in nine states to track and set spending growth targets, emphasizing the need for policies that align spending with community health goals. The article also discusses the challenges in completing confirmatory trials for drugs granted accelerated approval, leading to delays and potential risks for patients. The authors advocate for comprehensive oversight, global budgets for hospitals, and accountable care organizations as key strategies to slow cost growth and improve health care. [Extracted from the article]

Background: Changing lifestyles, health care, growing age, and life expectancy have contributed to the occurrence of old age in communities. The elderly population are rising who are aged 60 or older in the present scenario. They are more prone to psychosocial problems such as stress, loneliness, low self-esteem, and anxiety. These problems impact their psychological health. Materials and Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted at selected communities of Amritsar, Punjab. A total of 200 older adults were involved using the purposive sampling technique. Data were collected using a predesigned sociodemographic pro forma and a five-point Likert scale to assess psychosocial problems among the elderly. The data collection method employed was interviewed. In the psychosocial problems assessment tool, a total of 35 items were included, which were further categorized as follows: no psychosocial problem (0--35), mild psychosocial problem (36--70), moderate psychosocial problem (71--105), and severe psychosocial problem (106--140). Results: The average age of the older adults was 69.31 ± 6.63 years, 65.5% were males and 34.5% were females. Regarding psychosocial problems, 69% had moderate, 16% had mild, 10.5% severe, and 4.5% had no problems. The median score was 90 (18). The median score was 17.50 (7) for stress, 38 (17.75) for loneliness, 18 (7.75) for anxiety, and 14 (7) for self-esteem. All the four domains, stress, loneliness, anxiety, and self-esteem, had a statistically significant relationship (P < 0.01). A statistically significant association was found between self-esteem, type of family, and anxiety with educational level. Conclusion: The study concluded that older adults in communities have significant psychosocial problems such as stress, loneliness, self-esteem, and anxiety. Collaboratively, health professionals, local community leaders, and social workers can formulate and execute a health awareness campaign to avoid these issues that cause the aged much anguish. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the relationship between the Liberal Party and the issue of empire during the era of British imperialism from 1880 to 1914. It reveals that the Liberal Party was divided on the matter, with some members supporting an active imperial policy focused on ethical foreign policy and improving the lives of colonial subjects, while others were skeptical of military action and believed that imperial expansion was costly. The article analyzes the role of imperialism in elections during this period and finds that while the Conservatives consistently emphasized empire in their campaigns, it was not always a central issue for the Liberals. The article also explores the language used by both parties when discussing empire and highlights the differences in their rhetoric. Overall, the article provides insights into the complex attitudes towards empire within the Liberal Party and its impact on electoral politics. [Extracted from the article]

A common explanation for Hillary Clinton's loss in the 2016 presidential election was that she catered to minorities at the expense of the broader electorate. How does such a loss narrative influence voters' interpretation of subsequent elections? In a conjoint experiment, white and Black Democratic respondents were randomly exposed to a vignette that ascribed Democrats' 2016 losses to their focus on identity politics. This narrative had an asymmetric effect on attitudes toward the 2020 election based on both race and gender. While it had no impact on white men's or Black women's understanding of why the Democrats lost the last presidential election or their candidate preferences for the next, it had a substantial impact on the electoral attitudes of white women and a moderate impact on those of Black men. Specifically, it shifted their support away from candidates committed to gender and racial equity and toward those emphasizing broad economic policies. The identity politics loss narrative thus may have acted as a self-fulfilling prophecy that advantaged white male candidates in the 2020 election. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper assesses the impact of the 2012 and 2014 elections in conflict-ridden Libya. Rather than resolving political and institutional crises, these elections intensified challenges, deepened divisions, and increased violence. The paper identifies the Libyan case as part of a deleterious pattern in which elections in conflict zones impede democratic transitions. It argues for delaying elections until the issues underlying conflict are systematically addressed, emphasizing the importance of prioritizing national reconciliation and establishing a stable institutional framework. Given that elections alone may not resolve conflicts, the study advocates for internally-driven national dialogues and reconciliation initiatives, with collaborative efforts from the United Nations and the broader international community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Utilizing agenda-building theory, we explore how campaigns and parties influenced press and public agendas during Florida's 2018 midterm election. We investigate if the Gubernatorial and Senate campaigns transferred issue salience and affective attributes to press coverage and online public discourse. Results of a mixed-method computer-assisted content analysis suggest weak transfer of issue salience and affective attributes by the campaigns and parties to the press and public agendas. The DeSantis campaign and Republican Party were the most successful at influencing press coverage and public discourse. First-level agenda-setting was observed by press coverage on the Gillum campaign and Democratic Party's agendas. The symmetry between these findings and election results offers correlational support for the limited effects of first- and second-level agenda-building and -setting in state elections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By investigating a one thousandth national execution quota issued in the Campaign to Suppress Counterrevolutionaries (1950–1953), the article explores an aspect of Maoist politics that has largely escaped mainstream scholarship on Mao, the CCP, and PRC history. It shows how the newly created Maoist regime sought to eliminate its political enemy based on a specific demographic estimate of one thousandth. Tracing the roots of this quantification of political enemies into Mao's class-analysis theory back to the 1920s and explaining other political campaigns throughout the 1950s as continuations of the party's use of this method, the article argues that quantitative concepts and relations were important instruments in Maoist ideology, the CCP's political strategy and the working of the party-state. By proposing a concept of "quotacide," the article identifies an ignored type of large-scale, ideologically based, and politically driven homicide in the history of political violence. The article also brings in similar quantitative policies of political suppression in other authoritarian party-states such as the Soviet Union (the 1930s) and North Vietnam (the 1950s) in this context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Party factions are central to our understanding of American politics, but what role do party factions play within the electorate? With an August 2022 survey of the American South, we investigate factions within the modern GOP. We find evidence that faction identities overlap, as most Republicans hold some degree of identification with multiple factions. We also employ multivariate analyses to show that, despite evidence of overlap, Make America Great Again (MAGA) identifiers hold distinguishable opinions on President Trump and a variety of election issues. This research demonstrates the importance of factions within the southern Republican electorate and argues that factions can be an identity, representing a new way to conceive of intraparty factions in American politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a quantitative-qualitative content analysis methodology, this paper explores the Twitter and Instagram profiles of political candidates affiliated with PP, PSOE, Vox, Adelante Andalucía, and Por Andalucía during the electoral campaign period leading up to the regional elections held on 29 June 2022, in Andalusia. We analysed a total of 871 posts with the objective of researching the populist communication strategies employed by each candidate, the main topics on their agenda and the attacks they launched against their rivals according to the social network used. The most relevant findings highlight the suitability of both networks to transmit messages that place people at the centre of the leaders' populist discourse. Twitter solidifies its role as the most popular digital tool for broadcasting campaign events and issuing calls to vote. Instagram emerges as the digital platform candidates most frequently use to present their political programme proposals and has the highest number of posts containing attacks by political leaders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the turning points in the 1960 presidential campaign was a gathering of 150 Protestant ministers at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington on September 7, 1960, two days after Labor Day. During the closed-door gathering, Protestant leaders, including Norman Vincent Peale, unanimously adopted a statement warning about the dangers to the First Amendment and the separation of church and state should a Roman Catholic be elected president. Drawing on newly available archival sources, this article examines the role of religion in the 1960 campaign, including John F. Kennedy's long struggle to neutralize the issue and the significance of Paul Blanshard's 1949 best-seller, American Freedom and Catholic Power. Although Peale was roundly criticized for his role in the Mayflower gathering, the real force behind the meeting was Billy Graham, who did not attend. After assuring Kennedy in a letter dated August 10, 1960, that he, Graham, would not raise the religious issue in the campaign, Graham, at Peale's behest, convened a group of Protestant ministers at the Montreux Palace Hotel in Switzerland eight days later to discuss how they could deny Kennedy's election in November. The direct consequence of the Montreux meeting was the Mayflower Hotel gathering. While Peale took the heat for the meeting, Graham continued to play both sides, insisting publicly that he was neutral in the presidential race while working behind the scenes to advance Nixon's candidacy, a strategy he employed again twenty years later in an attempt to jettison the reelection of a fellow evangelical, Jimmy Carter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Doxa Comunicación is the property of Fundacion Universitaria San Pablo - CEU and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Revista de Comunicación 'Vivat Academia' is the property of Facultad de Ciencias de las Informacion de la Universidad Complutense (Espana) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The 2019 European Parliament (EP) elections produced remarkable gains for Green parties throughout the European Union (EU). We analyse in how far different national electoral contexts can explain the electoral success of Green parties in EU member states. On the theoretical side, we argue that an increased salience of EU environmental politics has led to 'green issue voting'. However, the relevance of environmental issue preferences depends on the electoral context in which Green parties compete for votes. Specifically, we expect 'green issue voting' to be most relevant for the smaller Green parties who own the environmental issue. On the empirical side, we test our argument by combining survey data collected by the European Election Study with information on party positions provided by the Comparative Manifestos Project. Our findings strongly suggest that the relevance of 'green issue voting' in the 2019 EP elections was conditionally dependent on the national electoral context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines three aspects of Brexit with regards to the NHS. First, we consider the influence of views regarding one of the most contentious issues in the referendum campaign: Vote Leave's claim that the 'savings' from EU membership could alternatively be used to provide additional funding for the NHS. We find that views about NHS underfunding had a relatively small, but statistically significant, effect on leave voting even after controlling for a range of socio-demographic and economic variables. However, the magnitude of this effect is reduced and becomes insignificant when health-related and cultural controls are added. Second, we examine how NHS workers voted relative to others in employment, and find that a relatively high proportion was actually leave voters. Finally, we analyse whether individuals thought that Brexit would have a positive or negative impact on the NHS, as well as the reason or reasons for their view. We find that supporters of the Conservative party were by far the most likely to think that Brexit would be good for the NHS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Swedish far-right party, the Sweden Democrats (SD), came to power in 2022 and is currently the second-largest party in the Swedish Parliament, the Riksdag. While it has been propagandizing an anti-migrant discourse, another newly founded party has been producing a counter-discourse. The newly created Nyans party claims to represent migrants and minorities in Sweden. However, its discourse uses controversial issues that could potentially misrepresent those communities. Our study aimed to analyze Nyans' Facebook posts published in the month leading up to the 2022 elections. Through our analysis process, which lasted from January to August 2023, we applied a critical discourse analysis approach to uncover the relationship between sociocultural issues and their social, political, and ideological contexts. The results reveal that Nyans' discourse focused on opposing left-wing parties and aligned itself with the far-right. The discourse aligned with misinformation campaigns on social media when addressing sociocultural issues. These issues include the childcare law, the burning of the Qur'an, and the veil, which are pertinent to a particular perspective in the Muslim community and do not necessarily represent immigrants or minorities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Growing evidence reveals that candidate issue engagement differs between men and women. However, recent research suggests that individual-level differences among candidates should be small under the strategic incentives inherent in single-member district elections that encourage party rather than personal-vote seeking. We examine whether men and women candidates emphasize different issues in their electoral campaigns and if the magnitude of the gender gap varies under different electoral rules. Our analysis of 7497 Japanese election manifestos spanning more than 20 years, from 1986 to 2009, reveals significant gender differences in the issues candidates emphasize in their electoral campaigns, regardless of party affiliation or other attributes. Moreover, these differences remain salient after an extensive change from a multi-member district to single-member district electoral system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study pursues a line of inquiry into male and female candidates' political campaign strategies on Facebook, drawing a sample from the 2019 National elections in Greece. The findings suggest that both genders disseminate one-way campaign information and address a wider palette of political issues than the ones typically associated with their gender. Some stereotypical patterns regarding traits and issue expertise seem to persist; females are more expressive in terms of visual content and use of emoticons, choose personalization and dialogic communication more frequently and emphasize culture and women's issues. Men are more often associated with negative campaigning, prioritize "masculine" issues such as employment and foreign affairs, and generate a greater level of user engagement. The results indicate that social media do not constitute an alternative communication channel that equalizes existing power structures. Instead, they seem to reflect the status quo and may hinder women candidates' efforts to gain visibility and communicate with the public. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two candidates competing for election may raise some issues for debate during the electoral campaign, while avoiding others. We present a model in which the decision to introduce an issue, or to reply to the opponent's position on one that she raised, may change the further list of topics that end up being discussed. Candidates' strategic decisions are driven by their appraisal of their expected vote share at the end of the campaign. Real phenomena observed during campaigns, like the convergence of the parties to address the same issues, or else their diverging choice on which ones to treat, or the relevance of issue ownership can be explained within our stark basic model. Most importantly, our analysis is based on a novel concept of equilibrium that avoids the (often arbitrary) use of predetermined protocols. This allows us to endogenously predict not only the list of topics that will be touched upon by each candidate, but also the order in which they will be addressed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In many cases, the level of participation in elections can be decisive: it can determine who gets into the parliament, who forms the government, and what topics are emphasised. Beyond being a political issue, it interests social scientists as well. They follow the issue outside the election period too. They investigate the electoral propensity to vote, the composition of the group of those who would vote and those who would not, the factors that most influence the propensity to vote, etc. This paper builds on the tradition of previous research and examines two possible factors in more detail. These are institutional trust and political efficacy, which many sources have found to be related to electoral propensity. It also pays particular attention to the comparison between Slovaks and Hungarians in Slovakia, concluding that a sense of internal and external political efficacy is related to electoral propensity, but that institutional trust and ethnicity are not determinants of this. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]