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Briefly describes the dynamic history of Sierra Leone since its independence in 1961 & its peculiarities regarding election laws, & presents the presidential candidates & parties running in the elections of 14 May 2002. Several opposition parties protested the election date of May 14th, declaring that it was too early to hold elections & that they should be held under an interim government in Nov. However, the exit strategy of the UN may have played a role in this & thus, careful election preparations were impossible. The author explains several problems this caused. Election participation & results of the two dominant presidential candidates & their parties are tabulated. Only the future will show whether the assessment of the EU election observers of these presidential & parliamentary elections as the most free & fair elections since the country's history will be the first steps toward democracy in Sierra Leone. E. Sanchez

Spreng, personal advisor of Edmund Stoiber (candidate of the conservative party, CDU/CSU) during the election campaign 2002, offers a look at the CDU/CSU election campaign strategy. It was planned to present Stoiber as the candidate of the political center. According to Spreng, it was correct to focus the campaign on economic & employment issues. Education as a third issue could not be presented due to resistance in the German Lander. The positive profile of the conservative candidate was permanently combined with a negative image of Chancellor Schroder. This strategy & a focus on social justice were mainly successful. The flood in southern & southeastern Germany & the focus on the question of supporting a war against Iraq were the crucial issues that allowed the SPD to gain ground. These two issues & the crisis of the liberal party shortly before the election resulted in the negative results. Adapted from the source document.

Nach einer außerordentlich spannenden Vorwahlzeit, in der zeitweise eine Ablösung der seit 1953 regierenden CDU möglich schien, brachte das Wählervotum am 25. März 2001 eine klare Bestätigung der CDU/FDP-Koalition. Trotz erheblicher Stimmengewinne, freilich überwiegend auf Kosten der Grünen, war es der SPD mit ihrer jungen Spitzenkandidatin nicht gelungen, die amtierende Regierung abzulösen. Dieser Wahlausgang war vor allem deshalb überraschend, weil die CDU weder in Personal- noch in Sachfragen über einen klaren Vorteil gegenüber der SPD verfügte. Bei genauer Betrachtung scheinen die folgenden Faktoren für den Wahlausgang maßgeblich gewesen zu sein: Die Strategie der beiden großen Parteien, ihren Wettkampf um die politische Führung ins Zentrum der Aufmerksamkeit zu rücken, erwies sich als erfolgreich. Hierunter hatten die kleinen im Landtag vertretenen Parteien, insbesondere die Republikaner und die Grünen, zu leiden. In der Auseinandersetzung zwischen CDU und SPD befand sich die CDU auf Grund der Verteilung der langfristig wirksamen Parteiidentifizierer gegenüber ihrer Konkurrentin im Vorteil. Schließlich spielte auch die Kandidatenfrage eine gewisse Rolle, denn die Wähler attestierten dem amtierenden Ministerpräsidenten im Vergleich mit seiner Herausforderin die größere Sachkompetenz und Führungserfahrung. (Zeitschrift für Parlamentsfragen / FUB)

Timm, personal referent of Prime Minister Harald Ringstorff, analyzes the 2002 local election strategy of the social democrats (SPD) in the Bundesland Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. Three concepts were central for the campaign: personalization (focusing on Ringstorff), issues (economy & employment, social justice), & negative campaigning. The front person of the SPD was an advantage to the conservatives & their candidate, Rudiger Rehberg. The social democratic competences in economic & employment policy were questioned, but not regarding the issue of social justice. Important for the Land election success were the national election & the mobilization against the conservative candidate, Stoiber. 5 References. Adapted from the source document.

Buttikofer, spokesman of the Green Party, provides a look at its campaign strategy. According to his analysis, three factors were crucial: the basic program, favorable current political issues, & a prominent team. The basic program, which was adopted in spring 2002, established loyalty among party members. The issue agenda in the last weeks of the election campaign was dominated by the (possible) Iraq war & the flood in southern & southeastern Germany. Finally, the prominent party personnel, especially Joschka Fischer, the foreign minister, had an important mobilizing effect. Adapted from the source document.

In the German mixed electoral system, district candidates are of two-fold importance. In those cases in which the electorate evaluate them in a positive manner, they help a party to win the district mandate and they may increase the party's (second) votes locally. But how parties are viewed is also important for both purposes. As an exit-poll for the two Stuttgart constituencies in 2013 shows, parties are on average better evaluated than candidates, if the latter are evaluated at all. If both are rated, most voters' judgement of the party and their candidates are in concurrence; the candidate of the best rated party receives the first vote und the best party the second vote (consonance voters). If the ratings differ, the two votes tend to differ, too (divergence voters) and candidate ratings become decisive when casting the first vote. Since the first vote is a majority election, the possible outcome, which can typically be assessed quite well, plays a role when deciding on whom to vote for. The candidate's rating is subtracted from the probability of him or her taking the vote. When SPD and Greens recommended to choose the Green candidate in one and the SPD candidate in the other Stuttgart constituency due to their respective higher chances of victory, this party strategy failed nevertheless. Some addressees would have been forced to choose a candidate whom they rated less favourably than the one of their own party. A party furthermore weakens its position if it advises against consonance voting. Adapted from the source document.

Matthias Machnig identifies two aspects in the SPD election campaign which are responsible for the massive loss of votes in the 2009 Bundestag election: the dependency on wrong assumptions on one hand, strong strategy deficits on the other. In spite of its being non-realistic, the SPD insisted on both having a candidate for the office of chancellor and on the possibility of a three-way red-yellow-green coalition, which had already been denied by the FDP. Also, the SPD did not realize the fight for the 'center of society' had already been won by the CDU. The greatest strategic deficit was the nomination of a candidate to run for chancellor without designing a campaign strategy and resolving the way of further acting in the 'grand coalition' -- consensus or conflict -- at the same time. The exact role allocation between Franz Muntefering and Frank-Walter Steinmeier was left open: Also, the SPD failed to tackle the topic of the economical crisis with own strategic ideas. To run a successful political campaign, one needs to determine for which topics and persons or against which parties and policies one fights; the SPD failed to do both. Adapted from the source document.

"When will the United States elect its first woman president? Many political observers believed that Hillary Clinton would win the White House in 2008, and many still believe she is a strong contender for 2016. Yet, while many believe that electing the first woman president is not a question of if, but who and when, media speculation on the topic has yet to move it from an interesting talking point to political reality. The question remains: Just how close are we to breaking this final political glass ceiling? By merging the two literatures of women and politics (especially women as candidates) and presidential campaigns and elections, a winning strategy for women candidates can emerge by analyzing what political science research tells us from past campaigns and what we can expect in the future"--

This article deals with the recent conventions (held in August 2016) of South Korea's ruling New Frontier Party (NFP) and the major oppositional Together Democratic Party (TDP), including explanations of the respective electoral procedures and their particularities. In both cases the main agenda was to elect new leadership, against the backdrop of the upcoming presidential election of December 2017. Naturally the party's nomination of the presidential candidate depends to a large extend on who is currently in power. Interestingly, both parties elected a leadership almost exclusively consisting of functionaries belonging to the currently dominant faction within each party - the pro-Park Geun-hye camp in the case of the NFP, and the pro-Mun Jae-in camp in that of the TDP. It remains to be seen whether it was a smart strategy to stick with the established powerholders so as to be nominating a competitive presidential candidate, or whether they should have opted instead for a political makeover. Both parties have been recent recipients of criticism for their poor performance, which even led to the emergence of a third party - the Peoples' Party (PP) - at the general election last year.

This article deals with the recent conventions (held in August 2016) of South Korea's ruling New Frontier Party (NFP) and the major oppositional Together Democratic Party (TDP), including explanations of the respective electoral procedures and their particularities. In both cases the main agenda was to elect new leadership, against the backdrop of the upcoming presidential election of December 2017. Naturally the party's nomination of the presidential candidate depends to a large extend on who is currently in power. Interestingly, both parties elected a leadership almost exclusively consisting of functionaries belonging to the currently dominant faction within each party - the pro-Park Geun-hye camp in the case of the NFP, and the pro-Mun Jae-in camp in that of the TDP. It remains to be seen whether it was a smart strategy to stick with the established powerholders so as to be nominating a competitive presidential candidate, or whether they should have opted instead for a political makeover. Both parties have been recent recipients of criticism for their poor performance, which even led to the emergence of a third party - the Peoples' Party (PP) - at the general election last year. (Asien/GIGA)

The result of the U.S. presidential election of 2004 mirrors almost completely the one of 2000. 47 out of 50 states voted for the candidate of the same party as they had done in 2000 -- therefore, allowing President George W. Bush a second term. However, several electoral trends indicate that Bush won both tightly & clearly. He managed, for example, to reach a higher level of distribution concerning members of the Electoral College in states that are mainly republican in the south. He also won votes, in particular, amongst Hispanics, women & Catholics. The 2004 election campaign was dominated more than ever by foreign policy issues. John F. Kerry, the candidate of the Democrats, was unable to profit from his long experience on this matter, while Bush managed to link the deteriorating situation in post-war Iraq with the war on terrorism. Furthermore, Kerry failed to benefit from Bush's mixed economic record. It is also notable that while the Democrats tried to win swing voters in the political center, the Republicans concentrated on mobilizing their own party base. The latter strategy proved more successful. Whether Bush can push through his ambitious reform agenda in his second term depends largely on his ability to work with Congress. 3 Tables. Adapted from the source document.

Im Bundestagswahlkampf 2002 wurde im deutschen Fernsehen ein neues TV-Format nach dem Vorbild der US-amerikanischen Präsidentschaftsdebatten eingeführt, das sogenannte "TV-Duell". Dabei handelte es sich um moderierte live-Debatten allein zwischen den Kandidaten der beiden großen Volksparteien. In der öffentlichen und wissenschaftlichen Diskussion wurden die "TV-Duelle" als Beispiel für die zunehmende Personalisierung und damit auch Amerikanisierung des bundesdeutschen Wahlkampfs kritisiert. Vor diesem Hintergrund liegt der komparativen Analyse der deutschen TV-Duelle und der US-Präsidentschaftsdebatten in dieser Dissertation das Erkenntnisinteresse zugrunde, ob es in den deutschen TV-Duellen tatsächlich zu Personalisierung kommt und welche Parallelen es dabei zu den US-Debatten gibt. Personalisierung wird dabei aus der Perspektive der Wahlkampfführung als gezielte Image-Strategie der Kandidaten betrachtet. Konkret wird untersucht, mit welchen verbalen Strategien die Kandidaten sich selbst, ihren Gegenkandidaten und ihre politischen Inhalte präsentieren und somit personalisieren. Darüber hinaus ist das Konzept der Arbeit interdisziplinär, da sie auch politikwissenschaftliche und kulturhistorische Ansätze beinhaltet. Analysiert werden die Transkripte der US-Debatten der Jahre 2000 und 2004 sowie die deutschen TV-Duelle der Wahlkämpfe 2002 und 2005 auf der Basis einer qualitativen Inhaltsanalyse. Theoretischer Bezugsrahmen sind sprachliche Strategien, die für den politischen Diskurs typisch gelten: face-keeping, politeness nach Brown/Levinson, impoliteness, modification und conversationalization. Die sprachliche Analyse kommt zu dem Ergebnis, dass Personalisierung nur partiell in deutschen TV-Duellen eingesetzt wird. ; During the German federal election campaign of 2002 German television introduced a new program, the so called "TV-Duell", i.e. moderated live debates between the candidates of the two major political parties. The program was based on the model of televised presidential debates in the U.S. In the public and the scientific discussion the "TV-Duell" was criticized as a further contribution to the increasing personalization of German election campaigns. Hence the general epistemological interest of this thesis is whether personalization in the German "TV-Duell" exists and which similarities come up in comparison to the U.S. debates. Personalization is defined as a deliberate image strategy used by the candidate and his campaign. In detail the comparative analysis of German and US-American televised election debates describes the verbal strategies that the candidates use in order to present themselves, their opponent and their political issues. Due to the interdisciplinary approach of the paper political and historical aspects of the debates are discussed as well. The data comprises the transcripts of the televised US-presidential debates of 2000 and 2004 as well as the German "TV-Duelle" of 2002 and 2005. The theoretical framework for the analysis consists of verbal strategies considered typical of political discourse: face-keeping, politeness according to Brown/Levinson, impoliteness, modification and conversationalization. As a result, the study shows that there is only partial use of personalization regarding the verbal performance of the candidates in the German "TV-Duell".