Innovative Candidate Selection As an Electoral Campaign Bonus

In 2012 the new liberal party NEOS was born and entered parliament in the Austrian national elections one year later. An innovative way of recruiting and selecting candidates, partly via internet, with several instead of one uniform candidate selection procedures created a lot of media attention, which was crucial for the electoral success of a new party with few financial resources. The paper describes and analyzes the party's candidate selection procedures and its effects.