The article examines the impact of electoral results on party membership and activity. Previous studies have focused on the long-term effects of electoral success or failure, suggesting that they may produce a spiral of demobilization or mobilization. The article shows that the dramatic change of electoral fortunes experienced by British parties at the 1997 general election broke this spiral, with the outcome leading to significant changes in the health and activity of local parties. It is concluded that dramatic election results can have significant implications for party organization.
Over the past decade, clear evidence has been produced showing that effective constituency campaigning in British general elections can lead to better electoral performance. This evidence has challenged the received wisdom that only national campaigning is significant and that efforts at local level are meaningless rituals. Denver et al. have focused on the role of the national parties in strengthening local campaigns in target seats; Seyd and Whiteley, by contrast, have stressed the importance of local party membership. This article attempts to assess the relative electoral impact of national party co-ordination and constituency party membership and suggests that the impact of these two factors varies by party.
Despite their central role in the electoral process, constituency agents have been largely overlooked by political scientists and this article seeks to rectify the omission. It sketches the origins and development of the role of agent from the late 19th century and suggests that a serious rethink of the role took place in the 1990s. Survey-based evidence about the social characteristics of agents is presented confirming that they are largely middle-aged, middle-class, well-educated men. They are also becoming more experienced, offer realistic assessments of the impact of constituency campaigning and, arguably, many take a long-term view of how their party's support can be maximised.
Elections for the Scottish Parliament and for all Scottish local authorities were held on the same day in 1999 and 2003, allowing a more detailed exploration of turnout variations than has been possible before. On both occasions, turnout in the two sets of elections was almost identical so that reported ward turnout at local level also indicates ward turnout in the parliament elections. Parliamentary turnout is analysed at both constituency and ward levels. The latter gives us greater confidence in the constituency results and also suggests some relationships which are not apparent at constituency level. The strongest determinant of turnout is consistently found to be the proportion of adults with a degree; religious affiliation, here analysed for the first time at the aggregate level, is also strongly related to turnout.
Political parties maintain local organisations and recruit members mainly to fight elections. For most of the post-war period, however, the dominant view among analysts has been that constituency campaigning in British general elections has little or no effect on election outcomes. This view has been challenged over the last ten years or so. Evidence derived from post-election surveys of constituency election agents following the 1992, 1997 and 2001 general elections is used here to show that the intensity of constituency campaigning significantly affects turnout levels and, for Labour and the Liberal Democrats, levels of party support. There is also some evidence that Conservative campaigning affected constituency variations in the party's performance in 2001. The conclusions reached on the basis of aggregate-level analysis are supported by analysis of individual-level data derived from British Election Study surveys. The effects of campaigning are not large, but they are clear and significant – and sufficient to affect the numbers of seats won by the major parties. In the light of this, parties have good reasons to maintain healthy local organisations.
Political parties maintain local organisations and recruit members mainly to fight elections. For most of the post-war period, however, the dominant view among analysts has been that constituency campaigning in British general elections has little or no effect on election outcomes. This view has been challenged over the last ten years or so. Evidence derived from post-election surveys of constituency election agents following the 1992, 1997 and 2001 general elections is used here to show that the intensity of constituency campaigning significantly affects turnout levels and, for Labour and the Liberal Democrats, levels of party support. There is also some evidence that Conservative campaigning affected constituency variations in the party's performance in 2001. The conclusions reached on the basis of aggregate-level analysis are supported by analysis of individual-level data derived from British Election Study surveys. The effects of campaigning are not large, but they are clear and significant – and sufficient to affect the numbers of seats won by the major parties. In the light of this, parties have good reasons to maintain healthy local organisations.
Along with a number of other researchers, Patrick Seyd and Paul Whiteley have consistently argued that constituency campaigning in Britain influences constituency election outcomes. In recent work, however, they have denied that the major efforts made by the Labour Party’s national headquarters to target resources and expertise into key seats in the 1997 general election was effective and that, as a consequence, the party had better results in these seats than elsewhere. Using various measures of campaign intensity, however, it is clear that target constituencies did have significantly stronger Labour campaigns than comparable constituencies that were not nationally targeted. Multivariate analysis also suggests that Labour’s performance in targeted seats was better than in comparable seats.
Constituency (local) campaigning in British general elections has been transformed over the past ten years or so. Firstly, national party headquarters have taken an increasingly large role in planning and managing constituency campaigns. Although the pace of change has varied across the major parties, all are heading down the same road. Secondly, campaigning on the ground has also changed. Technological and other changes have led to a decline in the use of traditional campaign techniques and increased use of new methods, especially in 'key' seats. These developments are charted using data derived from a unique set of nationwide surveys of election agents at the last three general elections. Finally, the article returns (briefly) to the debate about the electoral effects of constituency campaigning, presenting data relating to its impact in each of the three elections concerned.
(2003). Constituency marginality and turnout in Britain revisited. British Elections & Parties Review: Vol. 13, No. 1, pp. 174-194.
Among the most interesting developments in British elections during the 1990s was the increased attention given to constituency campaigning by the major parties. Having been eclipsed by television and the national campaign since the 1960s, and consistently downgraded in importance by academic analysts, local campaigning was revitalized. There were a number of reasons for this, including the development of personal computers, the campaigning possibilities opened up by telephone canvassing and an increasingly professional approach to campaigning on the part of staff at party headquarters. The revival of the parties’ enthusiasm for constituency campaigning was matched by, and in part also encouraged by, renewed interest on the part of academics whose work significantly revised the prevailing orthodoxy about the impact of local campaigning. Far from being a ‘ritual’, undertaken by party workers out of habit, a series of studies by three separate groups of researchers provided clear and persuasive evidence that local campaigning affected election outcomes. Measuring the strength of campaigns in various ways, Seyd and Whiteley, Johnston, Pattie and colleagues, and Denver and Hands demonstrated that in recent elections variations across constituencies in the intensity of campaigns mounted by the parties were associated with variations in their electoral performance (see, for example, Denver and Hands, 1997, 1998; Denver, Hands and Henig, 1998; Johnston, Pattie and Fieldhouse, 1995; Whiteley and Seyd, 1994). There are some areas of disagreement between these research teams on whether Conservative campaigning has been as effective as that of the other major parties, for example, and on whether campaigns by incumbent parties were as effective as those of challengers but there is substantial agreement on the central point: at least as far as Labour and Liberal Democrats are concerned, constituencies which mount strong campaigns generally achieve better results than those whose campaigns are weaker.
Modern British general election campaigns take place at two main levels. Firstly, in every constituency there is a local campaign. Volunteers working for the parties canvass the electorate, distribute leaflets and put up posters, while the candidates seek to meet the electorate by going on walkabouts, visiting clubs and pubs in different parts of the constituency and so on. In addition, of course, there is a national campaign, directed by party headquarters, which centres on the activities of the party leaders, the daily press conferences in London, election broadcasts and the like. The development of election campaigning over the past century has involved, broadly speaking, a switch in focus on the part of the political parties from the constituency campaigns to the national campaign. But the two general elections of the 1990s seem to have gone some way to reverse that trend. There has, apparently, been something of a resurgence of local campaigning, with significantly greater resources being poured into the constituencies by all of the major parties, and this has been matched by a renewed interest in this aspect of electoral politics on the part of academics.
Journal Article Turnout Get access DAVID DENVER, DAVID DENVER Reader in Politics *Lancaster University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar GORDON HANDS GORDON HANDS Senior Lecturer in Politics †Lancaster University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Parliamentary Affairs, Volume 50, Issue 4, October 1997, Pages 720–732, https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordjournals.pa.a028767 Published: 01 October 1997
Johnston and Pattie have consistently argued that constituency campaigning in British general elections has beneficial effects on the performance of challenging parties but not on that of incumbent parties. It is difficult to explain why this should be so, however, and a more satisfactory formulation is that the impact of campaigning will vary according to the pre-existing electoral strength of a party in a constituency. This was the case in the 1992 general election, but the picture is complicated by the fact that the campaigns of the different parties had differential impacts. Furthermore, the differences between the parties in terms of campaign effect appear to be more important than differences arising from previous electoral strength. This suggests that further research in the area should take account of the receptiveness of different kinds of voters to the campaigning efforts of the parties. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd.
