Do Candidates Seek Personal Votes on the Internet? Constituency Candidates in the 2009 German Federal Elections

Abstract

The Internet provides new opportunities for political communication. How strategic are constituency candidates in exploiting these new opportunities and what are the contexts driving their choices? This paper envisions the Internet as a means for personal vote-seeking on the campaign trail adopted by those candidates electorally motivated in this regard. It aims to explore this argument in theoretical and empirical ways and in light of survey data resulting from the 2009 German Candidate Study (GCS 2009). These data cover 38 per cent (N = 790) of all constituency candidates running in the 2009 campaign and enclose numerous questions on their campaign activities online.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Thomas Zittel is Professor for Comparative Politics at Goethe-University Frankfurt. His research focuses on the structural and behavioural bases of representative government with a special emphasis on issues of electronic democracy, election campaigns, legislative behaviour and reform politics. Zittel is author of two books and co-editor of two volumes. His articles have appeared among others in West European Politics, Electoral Studies, the Journal of Legislative Studies, German Politics and Politische Vierteljahresschrift.

Notes

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7. Cain et al., The Personal Vote; Mayhew, Congress.

8. James Kuklinski, ‘District Competitiveness and Legislative Roll-Call Behavior: A Reassessment of the Marginality Hypothesis’, American Journal of Political Science 21/1 (1977), pp.627–38.

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10. Pippa Norris, A Virtuous Circle: Political Communication in Postindustrial Societies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); Tamara A. Small, ‘Canadian Cyberparties: Reflections on Internet-Based Campaigning and Party Systems’, Canadian Journal of Political Science/Revue canadienne de science politique 40/3 (2007), pp.639–57.

11. James Stanyer, ‘Elected Representatives, Online Self-Presentation and the Personal Vote: Party, Personality and Webstyles in the United States and United Kingdom’, Information, Communication & Society 11/3 (2008), pp.113–31; Stephen Ward and Rachel K. Gibson, ‘On-Line and on Message? Candidate Websites in the 2001 General Election’, British Journal of Politics and International Relations 5/2 (2003), pp.188–205; Thomas Zittel, ‘Lost in Technology? Political Parties and the Online Campaigns of Constituency Candidates in Germany's Mixed Member Electoral System’, Journal of Information Technology & Politics 6/3–4 (2009), pp.298–311.

12. Nicola Döring, ‘Personal Home Pages on the Web: A Review of Research', Journal of Computer Mediated Communication 7/3 (2002), doi:10.1111/j.1083-6101.2002.tb00152.x.

13. Girish J. Gulati, ‘Members of Congress and Presentation of Self on the World Wide Web’, Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics 9/1 (2004), pp.22–40.

14. S.E. Jarvis and K. Wilkerson, ‘Congress on the Internet: Messages on the Homepages of the US House of Representatives 1996 and 2001’, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 10/2 (2005), doi:10.1111/j.1083-6101.2005.tb00246.x.

15. Ward and Gibson, ‘On-Line and on Message?’.

16. Nigel A. Jackson and Darren J. Lilleker, ‘Just Public Relations or an Attempt at Interaction?’, European Journal of Communication 19/4 (2004), pp.507–33.

17. Zittel, ‘Lost in Technology?’; Thomas Zittel, Mehr Responsivität durch neue digitale Medien? Die elektronische Wählerkommunikation von Abgeordneten in Deutschland, Schweden und den USA (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2010).

18. Baxter et al., ‘The Use of the Internet by Political Parties’; Kris Erickson and Darren G. Lilleker, ‘Campaign Websites and Hypermedia Campaigning: Lessons from the Ed Balls Labour Leadership Campaign 2010’, Parliamentary Affairs 65/2 (2012), pp.404–24.

19. Hagen Albers, ‘Politik im “Social Web”. Der Onlinewahlkampf 2009’, in K.-R. Korte (ed.), Die Bundestagswahl 2009. Analysen der Wahl-, Parteien, Kommunikations- und Regierungsforschung (Wiesbaden: Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 2010), pp.227–38; Eva J. Schweitzer, ‘Normalization 2.0: A Longitudinal Analysis of German Online Campaigns in the National Elections 2002–9’, European Journal of Communication 26/4 (2011), pp.310–27.

20. Tai-Li Wang, ‘A Comparative Study of Campaign Blogs and Websites: The Case of Taiwan's 2008 General Elections’, Online Information Review 34/2 (2010), pp.229–49.

21. Shaun Bowler, T. Donovan and J.A. Karp, ‘Why Politicians Like Electoral Institutions: Self-Interest, Values, or Ideology?’, Journal of Politics 68/2 (2006), pp.434–46; Gibson and McAllister, ‘Does Cyber-Campaigning Win Votes?’.

22. The distribution of candidates by party does not significantly deviate from the overall population (SPD 20 per cent instead of 22; CDU/CSU 22 per cent instead of 26; FDP 19 per cent instead of 18; Greens 20 per cent instead of 16; LINKE 19 per cent instead of 18). When considering the mode of candidacy, the distribution in the sample (26 per cent are party-list-only candidates; 23 per cent are district-only candidates; 51 per cent are dual candidates) is essentially the same as in the population (28 per cent party-list-only candidates; 20 per cent are district-only candidates; 52 per cent dual candidates). Moreover, the realised sample does realistically reflect the population in terms of mean age (46 years in sample compared to 47 years in population) and gender (69 per cent male candidates compared to 68 per cent in population).

23. Hans-Dieter Klingemann and Bernhard Wessels, ‘The Political Consequences of Germany's Mixed-Member System: Personalization at the Grass Roots’, in M.S. Shugart and M.P. Wattenberg (eds), Mixed-Member Electoral Systems: The Best of both Worlds? (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp.279–96; Thomas D. Lancaster and W. David Patterson, ‘Comparative Pork Barrel Politics: Perceptions from the West German Bundestag’, Comparative Political Studies 22/4 (1990), pp.458–77.

24. Karen E. Cox and Leonard J. Schoppa, ‘Interaction Effects in Mixed-Member Electoral Systems: Theory and Evidence from Germany, Japan, and Italy’, Comparative Political Studies 35/9 (2002), pp.1027–53; Federico Ferrara, Erik S. Herron and Misa Nishikawa, Mixed Electoral Systems: Contamination and Its Consequences (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005).

25. Ellis Krauss, Kuniaki Nemoto and Robert Pekkanen, ‘Reverse Contamination: Burning and Building Bridges in Mixed-Member Systems’, Comparative Political Studies 45/6 (2012), pp.747–73.

26. Thomas Zittel and Thomas Gschwend, ‘Individualised Constituency Campaigns in Mixed-Member Electoral Systems: Candidates in the 2005 German Elections’, West European Politics 31/5 (2008), pp.978–1003.

27. Gibson and Römmele, ‘Down Periscope’.

28. Zittel, ‘Lost in Technology?’.

29. Ibid.

30. Eva J. Schweitzer, ‘The Mediatization of E-Campaigning: Evidence from German Party Websites in State, National, and European Parliamentary Elections 2002–2009’, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 17/3 (2012), pp.283–302.