Election campaigns are among the most important events in the lives of democracies and societies in transition. Campaigns often constitute the high points in public debate about political issues. Election campaign communication takes different forms in different national and regional contexts. It is shaped by both party and media systems and by the regulatory environment
The history of survey research is inseparably entwined with the development of election polling. As early as 1904, social scientists completed the first quantitative study focusing on the constituency of the Social Democratic Party in Germany. The breakthrough of the representative survey method in the year 1936 was brought about by the spectacularly successful election
Election research has played a decisive part in the development of the methods of survey research from the beginning. More than market and media research, election research has awoken, in a special way, the curiosity and the ambition of researchers, and thus strongly affected empirical social research. It is significant that the breakthroughs of both