Amateurs met een missie?

This thesis is about the communication of local political parties. It seems that the last fifteen years local political parties in The Netherlands are getting more popular. In the past local council elections, all local political parties combined have had more electoral success than any other political party. It is suspected that the communication of these local political parties plays a certain role in their success. The research question for this thesis is: What is the role of communication in the electoral success of local political parties? Three case studies helped to find an answer for this question. Local political parties in Spijkenisse, Schiedam and Vlaardingen have been studied, through interviews with in each case four persons who are highly involved in local politics. Of those four, one member of the local political party, two members of a local department of a national political party and one journalist. In each case the local political party has a certain amount of electoral success. For O.N.S. in Spijkenisse it is ‘constant succes’, for Leefbaar Schiedam in Schiedam it is ‘varying success’ and for StadsBelangen Vlaardingen in Vlaardingen it is ‘never success’. The study showed that communication indeed plays a certain role in the electoral success of local political parties. For a certain part it counts as: the more and the better the communication, the more success these parties have. The most effective communication is through direct contacts with voters, but communication through the use of local media also seems effective. However, besides the fact that communication does play a part in the amount success of these parties, this study shows that all these local political parties have a lot of similarities. They are basically all amateurs that don’t really have a clue what the effects of their communication are or how they can be successful.