Political parties’ mobilization strategies during the global Pandemic. Ecuador’s national elections.

The conventional expectation on political parties use of mobilization strategies is that they will use one strategy to engage their voters, e.g., parties will be programmatic or clientelistic. However, political parties combine different strategies to mobilize electoral support. The literature often explores mobilization strategies independent of rhetoric. Given the rise of polarization in the Latin American electorate, and in the politicians representing them, we explore the interaction between polarized rhetoric and mobilization strategies. We put special emphasis on the inter-party variation across different audiences, focusing on the strategies each party deploys to engage with different constituencies. To achieve this, we use an original database that combines data on all candidates’ (presidential and legislative) Twitter presence and data on 88 provincial legislative candidates and three presidential candidates whose campaigns (from December 31 to February 4) were closely followed. We use qualitative content analysis to define the candidates’ appeals, focusing on often in-person events where candidates spoke to their voters. We use content analysis and network analysis to characterize their Twitter communities and their Twitter data interaction. We find that parties’ mobilization strategies, against conventional expectations, combine polarizing rhetoric alongside multiple mobilization strategies, e.g., programmatic, clientelistic, and symbolic appeals. Most importantly, parties and their candidates use different combinations of appeals and rhetoric forms depending on their location and the campaign’s timing. Our findings suggest that parties’ role representing preferences is more nuanced than expected and conditional on contextual factors. Parties tailor their appeals to different constituencies, meaning that they segment and fragment their strategies. Lastly, symbolic appeals (ethnic, candidate, and party-centered) are commonly used, more often than programmatic and clientelistic ones.