What drives data‐driven campaigning (<scp>DDC</scp>)? A comparative analysis of the institutional and organisational factors shaping the adoption of <scp>DDC</scp> in the French and German party systems

Abstract This paper analyses the adoption of data‐driven campaigning (DDC) by German and French parties in recent national elections using data from an original post‐election survey of 27 parties (12 German, 15 French) and a new purpose‐built DDC campaign index. Specifically, we investigate two main research questions: (1) Do countries and parties vary in the extent to which DDC is practised? (2) If so, what explains those differences? We find that while in both countries DDC adoption is limited in comparison to other campaign modes, differences exist across countries and parties based on a range of macro (systemic) and meso (organisation‐level) factors. Most notably, contrary to normalisation theory, we find that minor parties with a ‘netroots’ base and newcomers who are digital ‘natives’ engage more in DDC than the ‘legacy’ major parties.