Political candidates in multi-party systems use different campaign strategies during elections. Previous studies have documented and tried to explain why some candidates focus on the party, while others rather try to attract as much attention for themselves, by running a personalized campaign. However, it has remained unclear what the effects of these different strategies are. Does the effort of candidates to run a personalized campaign electorally pays off? We questioned almost 1000 Belgian candidates about their campaign strategies and linked this to their personal election results. We find that a personalized campaign indeed pays of, but only when candidates possess enough resources to run an effective personalized campaign. Thus, we conclude that, paradoxically, the tendency of decentralized personalization, in which there is more room for all candidates to run a personalized campaign, strengthens the tendency of centralized personalization, as only a limited number of candidates actually benefit.
