The article presents some of the results of public opinion polls that were carried out as a part of a panel poll, organized by the «Institut Universitaire de Sondage d'Opinion Publique» and covering 1.500 belgian voters.The article specifically deals with the following items - the meaning of the votes shift between 1971 and 1974 (as far as voting intentions were concerned) ;- the moment at which voting decisions crystallized in the 10-3-74 elections;- the way in which the political climate was perceived, and the predominant cares voters had before the elections;- the impact of certain attitudes on votes shifting: an analysis of these processes (specifically by the latent class approach).

Until 1971 the Belgian Socialist Party (BSP) was the only political, party that closely and systematically involved its members in the designation of socialist candidates for parliamentary elections. This was achieved through a system of pre-elections within the party («polling»).The trend away from «polling», already perceptible in 1971, has asserted itself in 1974. Hardly 56 % of the elected members of Parliament owe their seat to their place on the candidate-list at the «poll».More than 40 % of them were designated by a party-congress. This change is noticeably true in Flanders.Nevertheless the choice between a «poll» and a congress as a decisionmaking technique is not relevant as to the renewal of parliamentary groups. This renewal is mainly due to the introduction of an age-limit (65) and of a gain in seats. Research also showed a growing lack of interest of party members in the composition of candidate-lists: participation has again slightly declined.

This article gives an account of the belgian party system in 1974. It concludes at the existence of a «multipartist» system. It also examines the ideological character of the party system. For this purpose, it studies the electoral platforms of all the parties. From a semiotics viewpoint, it isolates a number of semantic axes. After a binary coding, it factor-analyses the results. Two main factors are extracted «ideological mixing» and conservative - progressist position.

This article aims to present a framework for comparative analysis ofelectoral programs.A content analysis of the programs of the last Belgian elections delivered a number of program items, classified in policy sectors: financial, cultural, social, economic, internal and foreign policy. For each item of each party was checked up if each other party agreed or disagreed with it, or didn't give an opinion upon it. These data were the basis to calculate the consensus and dissension between the parties.These data were also the basis to construct the programmogram, a graph representing the extent of the programs of the parties, their originality, the importance attached to each policy sector, and the consensus and dissension between the parties.

The purpose of this paper is to devote, from the viewpoint of mass communication research and persuasion strategy, some reflections on thepolitical propaganda campaign conducted after an unexpected dissolutionof the Parliament. The analysis starts from a operational communicationmodel.The unexpected character of the dissolution carriers several problems of communication strategy: the basic data of the marketing situation are deficient, the delimitation ( with priorities) of target audiences is problematic, the choice of manipulative variables becomes a matter of pure experience.In this context the author gives bis opinion about the campaigns elaborated on the occasion of the last parliamentary elections in Belgium: he ascertains a normal link to the actual social and cultural problems of the Belgian society, an orientation to a large and heterogeneous audience, but also a lack of central themes in the propaganda.The proposed operational model, in part inspired by advertising theories (Warneryd-Nowak), seems to be a useful complement to the classic lists of practical recommendations drawn up in propaganda literature.

This paper represents a first approach of the campaign in the frenchspeaking radio and television. A thorough study will be done later. You will read here: - the different kinds of electoral programmes; - the topics of the campaign through the questions asked by the audience, the questions selected by the journalists, the topics of the political platforms; - the critique (the reactions of the press af ter the programmes); - the audience (how many people looked at the political programmes and why); - the «case François» (a political journalist working for the television became candidate for a political party).

The 1974 election-period has been sustained intensively by the BRT (Belgian Radio and Television Corporation). The Board of Directors decided to do sa in order to accomplish the corporation's task of objective information.The political parties also used intensively the extra air-time accorded by the same Board of Directors, for their clection-campaign. As for all political parties all over the world, radio and even more television air-time, is seen as an indispensable instrument for diffusing party-coloured information.

People in Belgium want to simplify the electoral laws. The responsible department (Ministère de l'Intérieur) has a project which is presented as being neutral, having no political implications. The authors compare the results of the last elections (March 74) computed according to several systems, including the new project. Their conclusion is that the new project is politically oriented: it favours the big parties.The authors propose a new system of ballot which is really neutral, and they show it by a simulation on the results of the elections since 1954.Their system is simple and easily treated by computer.

The elections for the provincial councils, held on the 10th of March 1974, has shown results that are quite similar to those shown by the parliamentary elections. Traditional parties keep or reinforce their positions, whereas the linguistic parties suffer a setback-clear-cut in the case of the Rassemblement Wallon and the Front Démocratique des Bruxellois, but only limited for the Volksunie, which has a long-standing Flemish-nationalist tradition.