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by soco 1736 days ago
I would always assume that when a single-issue party gets elected, they would push mostly on that issue. Because if someone sympathizes with the Pirates, they do because of the core message, not because of their social policies (which any party is required to answer but some care less)
2 comments

It's a sensible assumption to make, but unfortunately it doesn't happen that way.

A successful single-issue party that has ill-defined goals in other areas is a ripe target for people pushing other single-issue agendas to insinuate those into the party programme.

In my view this caused the death of the German Pirate Party - the initial impression of "generally centrist, but competent and uncompromising on tachnology/IP/privacy" among the electorate was quickly shifted to "wokesters and economic leftists who are way more extreme than even the Left Party" because the initial members were infiltrated and supplanted by leftist political activists...

But this should be a safe recipe for disaster, shouldn't it? Like the sister comment says, if they don't even bother to advertise on their initial topics anymore, they are for all matters a different party now... so disappointing. I suppose the vote analysis websites should be able to uncover this quickly, otherwise they'd be failing their own goals.
Speaking of the German Pirate Party, I found it interesting that I haven't seen a single election poster about technology or direct democracy this year. The ones I saw were exclusively about the 1.5° climate goal, the gender wage gap, and another social topic that I forgot. Not sure if that's an actual strategy, or just the preferred way to empty their wallets while they have no chance to cross the frustrating 5% firewall anyway.
If they would have continued on their defining issue, maybe the 5% could have been attained, because privacy and security scandals to bank on are a-plenty. Oh well.
A lot of young people starting voting green because they were against upload filters. Then they stayed because the rest of the policy package is solid.