The Geography of Electioneering in Multi-Party Systems: Evidence from Campaign Poster Locations in Central Berlin

Amid concerns about technological disruption and democratic fragility, we examine a foundational yet often overlooked layer of political communication: the spatial footprint of offline campaigning. While digital tools, platforms, and data-driven techniques are integral to contemporary strategy, campaign posters remain among the most visible, routine, and low-friction instruments of day-to-day electioneering - shaping political exposure in the very places where voters live, work, and move. Focusing on Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg, a diverse district in central Berlin, during the 2025 German federal election, we compile and geolocate a comprehensive sample of over 10,000 posters to analyze how parties distribute attention across space. The study tests whether parties primarily emphasize mobilizing their own supporters or instead seek to reach non-voters and opponents’ supporters, and which poster types align with each strategy. We link poster locations to precinct-level electoral strength and local preferences, enabling a direct assessment of mobilization versus chasing in a multi-party setting. Methodologically, we combine geospatial analysis with an automated, AI-assisted image pipeline that detects posters in photographs, clusters recurring motifs, and classifies content (e.g., personalization and issue emphasis). This approach scales measurement of both where and what parties communicate, increases reproducibility, and lowers barriers for comparative applications across countries and elections. Preliminary results indicate a clear predominance of mobilization: parties concentrate posters in areas of prior strength, suggesting that high-visibility, low-cost offline tactics continue to structure local voter contact and exposure even in digitally saturated environments. Substantively, the findings illuminate how parties combine online and offline tools in hybrid strategies, with implications for participation, resilience, and informational inequality - particularly which audiences are systematically targeted or overlooked. By mapping the spatial distribution of campaign communication, the project also points to potential “communication deserts,” where citizens encounter fewer political cues and calls to action. The paper contributes to debates about political communication under conditions of technological change by centering the analog infrastructures that still organize everyday exposure, and by showing how AI can be leveraged to measure these infrastructures at scale. Beyond advancing measurement, the analysis opens a window onto the democratic consequences of hybrid campaigning: who gets reached, how often, and with what kind of message. In doing so, it complements platform-focused research and speaks directly to the section’s agenda on how evolving communication ecosystems - digital and analog - shape engagement, accountability, and democratic resilience.