“Never Was There More to Do" : Use of Vaguely Formulated Statements in the 2021 German National Election Campaign and Their Potential Effects

Communicating vague political statements seems to be a common communication strategy adopted by political actors, especially during time of elections. We want to examine how often vague political statements were used in the 2021 German federal election campaign. To do so, we analyzed the slogans of all election campaign posters the seven parties represented in the German federal parliament have produced for the 2021 federal election in Germany. Further, we want to shed some light on the question whether and under what conditions the communication of vague political statements positively or negatively affects the evaluation of the politician using it. To do so, we conducted an experimental study. Our analyses show that vaguely formulated political statements were used more often as slogans for the 2021 federal election posters than concrete positions. Further, they may have advantages over concretely formulated political positions with regard to recipients’ evaluations of the advertising politician, at least under certain conditions. Recipients do evaluate politicians more positively when they communicate vaguely on a controversially discussed issue. ... mehrIn the case of a non-controversial issue, the evaluation of the politicians does not differ significantly between vaguely ore concretely formulated statements.