Agenda Building Strategies of the National Awakening Party in Tulungagung Regency during the 2024 Elections

Abstract

This is the qualitative descriptive agenda-building phenomenon study of the National Awakening Party campaigns widely known as Partai Kebangkitan Bangsa, PKB, in Tulungagung during the 2024 election. It describes and explains phenomena without manipulating variables or interventions, providing depth of understanding of context, characteristics, and dynamics of events. The success of PKB's agenda setting in Tulungagung was corroborated by the party itself, which won 9 seats in the regional parliamentary body compared to 7 in 2019. More success was accounted for with regard to the comprehensiveness of the process: from internal operations that had closed and later opened meetings, sessions consolidating PKB visions and missions, down to aligning candidate training. Afterwards, it was followed by a string of thematically based events, which took up matters such as agricultural policy, effective political participation of youth, and promotion of small businesses. These activities mobilized different sets of voters and culminated with the grand finale of this campaign. Such multi-dimensional effort outperformed the electioneering goals set by the party, and efficiency of the party's agenda-building operations was more than well attested. The present paper enlightens on how to mount a political campaign and reinforces tailored and inclusive agenda building. Hence, these results provide real practical implications for the political communication and campaigning strategies to enable success at the polls.