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Political campaigns are orchestrated attempts by political organizations to garner public support through persuasive communication in order to influence public policy in their favor. This broad definition encapsulates all forms of campaigns from those of neighborhood organizations seeking to influence local politicians to the campaigns of political parties and candidates who seek election to office in order to shape policy themselves. In pluralist democracies, campaigns are crucial for representation. Campaigns are a means by which groups of individuals with a common cause can communicate their stance and enable others with similar concerns to join their campaign; thus, campaigns give voice to those individuals and the supporters of their cause. The majority of academic research has focused on the campaigns orchestrated by those seeking election, in particular political parties or candidates seeking to be elected as national president. Due to the levels of resources, the campaigns run by candidates for the U.S. presidency are the most sophisticated and gain most attention. The campaign environment is more complex, however. This entry explores that complex environment, discusses the evolution of political campaigns to their current professionalized form, and concludes with research around campaign effects.

This study is aimed at exploring the persuasive language strategies used by the candidates of mayor of Gorontalo in the mayoral electoral campaign of 2018. The data, in form of utterances, were taken from the speeches of their political campaign by using video recording. After the data were collected, those were firstly classified into the types of persuasive language strategies, then analyzed and interpreted regarding the function and the way the speaker used those strategies to persuade the audience. The result showed that the three candidates used the similar strategies to influence the audience of their political campaign. Those strategies are reason and logic, evidence, attack, appeal to a sense of justice, appeal to the hip-pocket nerve, appeal to patriotism, repetition, and colloquial language. However, based on the interpretation, the different political background of the candidates influenced the way they used the strategies.

Political campaign spending ceilings are purported to limit the incumbent's ability to exploit his fundraising advantage. If the challenger does not have superior campaign effectiveness, in contrast to conventional wisdom, we show that the incumbent always benefits from a limit as long as he has an initial voter disposition advantage, however small and regardless of the candidates' relative fundraising ability. If the challenger has higher campaign spending effectiveness, the effect of limits may be non-monotonic. If the incumbent enjoys a mild initial voter disposition advantage, a moderate limit benefits the challenger. Further restricting the limit favours the incumbent. Stricter limits may lead to the unintended consequence of increased expected spending.

This paper characterizes the optimal advertising strategy of candidates in an election campaign, where groups of heterogeneous voters are targeted through media outlets. We discuss its effects on the implemented policy and relate it to the well-documented increase in polarization. Additionally, we empirically establish that polarization displays electoral cycles. These cycles emerge in the model as candidates find it optimal to cater to different groups of voters and thus to adjust policies. Further, technologies that allow targeting voters more precisely tend to increase polarization. Our prediction is confirmed empirically as an increase in internet penetration leads to higher polarization.