Out of the shadow into the light: Regionalization in campaign strategies as a means of escaping national electoral trends?

This paper studies parties’ electoral performances in Austrian regional and national elections against the backdrop of extraordinarily turbulent national politics during the last two decades. Following the classic second order election argument, we assume that the performance of regional party branches in regional elections is largely determined by national party performance. However, we contend that regional political agency and campaign choices exert important moderating effects. Specifically, we draw on Austrian regional election manifestos whether campaign regionalization — i.e., emphasis on (a) regional policy issues, (b) regional candidates and politicians, and (c) symbolic distancing of the regional party from national politics — soften the blow of 'poll lows' of the national party. By the same token, we investigate whether campaign nationalization at the regional level leads to a greater electoral yield from 'poll highs' of the national party. Our study has important implications for party competition and voter behavior in multilevel political systems.