Gordon Hands

The Electoral Impact of Constituency Campaigning in Britain, 1992-2001

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 partys 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.

Does Studying Politics Make a Difference? The Political Knowledge, Attitudes and Perceptions of School Students

There has been considerable debate in recent years about the effects of the teaching of Politics upon levels of ‘political literacy’ – the knowledge and understanding of the political process and political issues which enables people to perform their roles as citizens effectively. Almost everyone receives some form of political education. For most people, however, the process of political education is informal: political knowledge, as well as opinions and attitudes, is picked up from the family, friends and the media. Informal political education also takes place in schools. In primary schools, children acquire elementary information about the political system, parties, leaders and so on. In secondary schools, subjects such as History and Geography and courses in General Studies frequently involve topics that are relevant to politics.

Marginality and Turnout in General Elections in the 1970s

In an article published some time ago. we analysed in a systematic way the relationship between constituency marginality and turnout in British general elections between 1955 and 1970. Previous considerations of marginality had concentrated on its effect upon change in turnout from one election to the next, but we were concerned with the relationship between the absolute level of turnout in constituencies in one election and their marginality at the previous election (‘previous marginality’). We found that there was a consistent, significant, positive relationship between previous constituency marginality and turnout.

The impact of constituency campaigning in the 2001 general election

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.

Challengers, Incumbents and the Impact of Constituency Campaigning in Britain

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.

Fishkin and the deliberative opinion poll: Lessons from a study of the Granada 500 television program

James Fishkin advocates the use of the “deliberative opinion poll” as a means of improving the way in which contemporary democratic systems work and proposes a number of hypotheses about the effects of the deliberative process in such a setting. On the basis of a survey of participants in the Granada 500, a series of television programs screened during the 1992 general election in the United Kingdom that is specifically referred to by Fishkin as an example of a deliberative poll, doubts about the viability and effectiveness of deliberative opinion polls are raised.

Constituency Marginality and Turnout in Britain Revisited.

(2003). Constituency marginality and turnout in Britain revisited. British Elections & Parties Review: Vol. 13, No. 1, pp. 174-194.

Exploring Variations in Turnout: Constituencies and Wards in the Scottish Parliament Elections of 1999 and 2003

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.

The Fall and Rise of Constituency Campaigning

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.

VOTER REACTIONS TO A PREFERENTIAL BALLOT: SOME SURVEY EVIDENCE

THE QLJESTION of electoral reform continues to hover at the edge of the agenda of British politics. It remains, of course, a central policy objective of the Social and Liberal Democrats, but it has also recently come to be considered seriously as an option by some leading members of the Labour party, as they contemplate their party’s electoral prospeas. There is also evidence of increasing interest in reform among Labour’s rank and file. Almost as many motions on electoral reform as on unemployment or health were submitted for debate at the 1989 party conference (Cwrdian, 31 July 1989). Not surprisingly, then, then continues to be discussion a b u t the likely consequences of introducing a preferential voting system into British elections. Attempts to use general election results to estimate the likely effects of preferential voting upon election outcomes are seriously hampered, however, by our lack of knowledge about how voters would react to a ballot which allowed them to place parties in order of preference. Generally, the assumption that has been made is that the party chosen under X-voting would continue to be the first preference, that both Labour and Consewati? supporters would place the Alliance (now the SLD) second, and that centre voters would divide their second prefer ences between the two major parties. Relatively little attention has been given to how other parties would fare!. In this note, we provide some evidence about how one group of people react to a prefer ential ballot. The data are derived from the second of,a series of surveys of young people throughout England and Wales, carried out in May 1987. The respondents were school sixthformers studying for A-levels, they were young people who had just joined, or were about to join, the electorate.’ In addition to eliciting their voting intentions by means of the standard opinion poll question, we asked our respondents to complete a dummy ballot paper, indicating how they would vote if there were a preferential voting system. Seven parties were listed on the ballot paper Conservative, Labour, Alliance, Gmn, Communist, National Front and Plaid Cymru. Analysis of the returns sheds some light on the likely responses of British electors to a preferential ballot.