Do parties and the media discuss the same topics? Similar agendas between parties and the media are a prerequisite for political representation. If mass media discusses different issues than the parties during the electoral campaign, parties will have trouble to get their messages out and voters will have difficulties to get information on the parties’ positions and priorities. Therefore, this study moves beyond agenda setting research to analyzes when and under which conditions congruence between the parties’ agendas and the media agenda emerges. We formulate hypotheses related to the party and media system, the role of parties, the type of media outlets and the dyadic relation between a party and a media outlet such as the degree of partisanship. The study combines content analytical data from news coverage from the European Election Study 2009 and data based on electoral programs from the Euromanifesto Project to measure media and party agendas.
