Strategic or Haphazard? Understanding Party Ambiguity during the 2019 and 2024 Belgian Electoral Campaigns.

Party ambiguity refers to the presentation of unclear issue positions by political parties. Some view it as a strategic tool to hide unpopular positions, broaden appeal, and avoid accountability (Downs, 1957; Somer-Topcu, 2015). Others argue that it is a risky strategy, contingent on voters’ risk aversity (Shepsle, 1972; Bartels, 1986). Both perspectives, however, share the assumption that ambiguity is a deliberate vote-maximization strategy. This paper challenges this core assumption. We argue that ambiguity can also arise unintentionally and propose intra-party heterogeneity as a key source of such haphazard ambiguity. This mechanism highlights a blind spot in existing models of party competition, which often assume the strategic use of ambiguous communication. Furthermore, most empirical studies treat ambiguity as a single dimension. We move beyond this and define ambiguity as a multidimensional phenomenon. We measure it along three dimensions: vagueness vs. precision, silence vs. emphasis, and inconsistency vs. consistency (Lefevere, 2024). This framework allows us to compare the usage of strategic and haphazard ambiguity across dimensions. To test our argument, we conducted a quantitative content analysis of newspaper articles from the 2019 and 2024 Belgian electoral campaigns. For each campaign, 35 policy issues were selected to capture the relevant space of party competition.