‘Double elections’ as a context of political communication

While much scholarship on political advertising examines regular presidential or parliamentary campaigns, less is known about how a context of “double elections” may influence the format and content of political advertising. This study attempts to fill this gap through quantitative and qualitative content analysis of the 2005 Polish parliamentary and presidential campaign ads. Specifically, we examined strategies used by political parties and presidential candidates to take advantage of the simultaneous presidential and parliamentary campaigns. Previous studies on Polish parliamentary and presidential campaigns have revealed that political parties might influence not only the process of a candidate’s nomination, but also the way candidates are presented in campaign messages. This study shows that once these two types of the elections are set within the frame of a few weeks, parliamentary elections seem to be of greater significance to political actors, while presidential campaigns are perceived as just an additional opportunity for political parties to promote themselves.