site.btaMedia Ad Spending Has Grown in Recent Election Campaigns, Expert Says

Spending on advertisements in the mass communication media has been growing in the last few election campaigns in Bulgaria. The campaign leading up to the European Parliament elections in June 2024 is expected to be sluggish, with voters receiving little information about the parties' working programmes for the only directly elected EU institution, Iva Lazarova, Executive Director of the Institute for Public Environment Development, said in an interview with BTA.

Asked to comment on the fact that campaign spending in the run-up to the latest Bulgarian local elections on October 29, 2023, increased by BGN 800,000 compared with the parliamentary elections a few months earlier, Lazarova said local elections are the most hotly contested type of political voting in the country. This is so because an individual's vote has the greatest weight when electing a town or village mayor and municipal councillors. At BGN 8 million per party, the legally established cap on campaign spending for local elections is higher than the BGN 3 million limit for parliamentary elections, because, in the case of local elections, campaigns are held in each of Bulgaria's 265 municipalities, whose inhabitants elect municipal councillors and mayors of municipalities and mayoralties, and also boroughs (in the largest cities).

These expense limits apply to parties and coalitions registered at the national level. There were 58 such parties and nine coalitions in the latest local elections. It is also possible to form coalitions at the local level, Lazarova explained. This added dozens of entities and independent candidates to the list of participants in the October 2023 local elections in each municipality. After the campaign, over 600 entities submitted reports to the National Audit Office (NAO), which was about ten times the number running in the parliamentary elections in April 2023.

NAO data shows that the participants in the latest local elections, registered with the Central Election Commission, spent a total of BGN 7,042,646 on their campaigns, Lazarova said. As usual, the largest portion of the money went towards media services, which cost BGN 3,860,110. Media advertising expenses have been growing over the last few election campaigns. According to the analyst, this may be due to the fact that election candidates feel more comfortable presenting their ideas in paid publicity formats free of criticism than in direct meetings with voters.

As far as expense planning is concerned, the leading parties applied different approaches, Lazarova said. The Continue the Change - Democratic Bulgaria coalition laid the strongest emphasis on its media presence. It reported the most spending on social media. By contrast, GERB focused on conducting an active grassroots campaign. This may be so because the party runs a network of well-developed grassroots chapters and shares in the local governance of many municipalities. It is up to each party to recapitulate the outcome of their tactics, but it is a fact that none of the main parties was disappointed with their results.

About 54% of total media advertisement spending ahead of the October 2023 local elections involved online publications, Lazarova said. This marked a significant change from the April 2023 parliamentary elections, when the money for online platforms was almost as much as that for private TV channels. Lazarova commented that parties obviously rely more and more on their presence on the internet to attract voters.

Another reason for the change may have to do with the specific nature of local elections, she said. Parties often have different messages to communicate in different municipalities as they focus on concrete local problems. This makes it difficult to conduct an effective campaign via national media.

Although expenses on social media posts are not officially a separate expense item, they are very often used by parties as a canvassing tool. Social media are an effective, ready-to-use channel to convey messages to voters, and they can be used successfully by smaller parties as well. This makes them particularly appealing during election campaigns.

Asked by BTA for comment on the decreasing role of in-person, on-site canvassing, Lazarova said that paid media advertising is much easier and undemanding than on-site canvassing in terms of time and contact with voters. The success of on-site events largely depends on the knowledge of local issues and idiosyncrasies, and the availability of functioning party grassroots chapters, she added.

After six election campaigns in two years, some of which did not involve any physical mass gatherings due to the COVID pandemic, it may be assumed that people have lost the habit of holding in-person, on-site events. Considering the decline in voter turnout rates since April 2021, voters are probably not very eager to attend physical campaign meetings, Lazarova reasoned.

The expert was also asked about her expectations of the European election campaign this coming May. She noted that Bulgarian elections to the European Parliament are usually marked by relatively low voter turnout (32.64% in 2019) and not particularly bitter political confrontation. Therefore, the upcoming campaign can be expected to be rather sluggish, with voters receiving little information about the parties' working programmes for the European Parliament, the only directly elected EU institution. It will be interesting to see the campaign platforms of openly Euro-skeptic parties, Lazarova noted.

In Bulgaria (and not only), European election campaigns are usually dominated by discussions on domestic political issues, she said. The forthcoming debates will be much more about "for" and "against" the governing majority in the country than about the future of the European project and Bulgaria's role in it, Lazarova said.