Netherlands Regional — Emerging political parties and how they campaign to compete with traditional forces

Campaigns on the horizon: Netherlands Regional — Emerging political parties and how they campaign to compete with traditional forces

How do you brand your new political party? With competition higher than ever, the campaign ahead seems to be the potential key to success. During the campaign, you can not only brand your party on content, but also in terms of its demographic: which age group do you want to target? Which region?

Current political parties often have enough resources in hand to set up a broad campaign, address multiple groups and update imaging through major media outlets. This works differently for small or new parties, because there is less money and often no reputation established yet. How do these emerging parties work towards building a successful campaign?

The Netherlands has major differences in campaigns. The socialists are characterized by walking down streets in poorer neighbourhoods (being visible). The labour party is handing out roses (the symbol of the party) in the street and liberal parties in the Netherlands are focusing more on online advertisements. Nevertheless, in the run-up to the regional elections in the Netherlands, which takes place on 15 March 2023, a shift seems to be taking place, partly because new political parties with a high level of ambition are participating. The most important first step for them is: choose something that distinguishes you as a symbol in the campaign. This can be your unique way of storytelling, a unique object or a specific target group.