This article analyzes how niche parties may utilize a strategy of policy shifting to garner additional voters. It leverages a unique opportunity in which a Costa Rican political party released two different versions of its party manifesto at different moments during a single election cycle. This rare opportunity uncovers how the party shifted from having a hard conservative stance on social issues, such as abortion, to moderating its stance and centering its focus on less contentious issues in a runoff election campaign. Understanding how a single political party may alter its strategy is important because it allows us to better gauge the effectiveness of shifting policy positions, especially for niche parties, for which a particular issue area is dominant. Moreover, this analysis opens additional avenues of research on political parties in the Latin American context, since research utilizing manifesto data in this context has been limited.

In Europe, the rise of populism is coupled with the rise of Islamophobia, vividly evident with exponential increases in votes for anti-Islam political parties in national elections. These parties portray Islam and Muslims as threats and maintain a position that Islam (as a religion and culture) is a threatening contrast to European values. By analysing Islamophobic discourses of the French National Front, Alternative for Germany and the Dutch Freedom Party, this article argues that Islamophobic populism targets not only Muslims, but also the incumbent leaders. By looking at the current dynamics of public opinion, this article explains how Islamophobic populism functions as an electoral strategy.