Since the widely noted SPD campaign in 1998, election campaign research has emphasized that election campaigns have changed, i.e., modernized, Americanized, or professionalized. However, the thesis of professionalization, which includes the increasing staging, emotionalization, and personalization of advertising messages, negative campaigning, and the use of external consulting, has so far remained without empirical verification. Yvonne Kuhn shows that all these aspects were already significantly relevant for the campaign planning and execution of established parties in the federal elections of 1953, 1965, 1976, and 1987. Stagings aimed at entertainment and dramatization, which push rational political content to the sidelines of public attention, were also part of the nature of earlier election campaigns. The change rather results from the experience of the SPD campaign.