How the New Political Parties Frame Their Messages: Evidence from the 2024 Romanian Elections

New political parties differ from the established ones in how they organize, approach membership, use digital tools, conduct campaigns, or elaborate key messages. Much less is known about how new parties frame their messages during campaigns. This is important because it may show visible differences from the other parties on the political arena, which can explain part of their electoral appeal. This paper analyses the framing used by the new political parties in the 2024 parliamentary elections in Romania. This is an ideal setting for this study since the new parties won roughly one third of the parliamentary seats. The analysis compares the framing of four new political parties (out of which three got parliamentary representation) with the framing used by four established political parties with parliamentary representation on issue related to the economy, social issues, the country’s position in the EU, and negative rhetoric against other competitors. The analysis uses party manifestos, documents from the party websites, media interviews with the party elites and party press releases in October and November 2024.