Beyond Targeting in the Digital Realm: Investigating Parties’ Offline Campaign Strategies Using Election Posters

The digitalization of political campaigns has intensified, yet traditional offline electioneering remains a critical component of parties’ voter outreach. While extensive research has investigated how parties target and tailor messages online, we know comparatively little about whether equivalent tactics are employed offline. Our study addresses this gap by exploring how parties adapt and vary their offline campaign messages to distinct audiences, with a specific focus on election posters. We develop a novel theoretical framework to analyze offline campaign strategies, emphasizing issue and personalization tactics. To test this framework, we use two unique data sources. First, we will systematically collect and geolocate a random sample of campaign posters during the 2025 German federal election in Berlin, linking their placement to contextual data on the likely audiences frequenting these locations. Second, we analyze district-level poster orders from regional SPD branches during the 2021 German federal election across Germany, integrating these data with local preference information. Combining qualitative and quantitative content analysis, we identify patterns in message adaptation across locations and audiences. These findings contribute to a more holistic understanding of modern electioneering, which combines online and offline channels in a hybrid manner. We thus underscore the continued relevance of offline tactics at a time in which the dominant focus of scholarship has been on digital campaigning and provide new tools to study offline campaign communication systematically. A more comprehensive perspective on electioneering is necessary to uncover the full potential of voter persuasion and to evaluate the normative implications of targeted campaign strategies.