It is no doubt that the changing structure of mass communications in the second half of the twentieth century has been central in stressing the role of political leaders at the expense of parties, making the latter more dependent in their communications with voters on the essentially visual and personality-based medium of television. The tight link between the rise of television and the so-called “personalization of politics” has been customarily put forward. Yet, the link between patterns of televised political information and changes in voting behaviour has received only limited attention in the available literature. This paper presents the theoretical and methodological framework that informs our study and it puts the resulting guiding research questions to an empirical test through analysis of national election study data data from 14 Western European parliamentary democracies in the period 1961-2016. In doing so, this paper elaborates on the as of now underdeveloped link between electoral research and political communication, and eventually speaks to the broader question of how important is media for the outcome of contemporary democratic elections.
