Hartman, T.K., Pattie, C. orcid.org/0000-0003-4578-178X and Johnston, R. (2017) Learning on the Job? Adapting Party Campaign Strategy to Changing Information on the Local Political Context. Electoral Studies. ISSN 0261-3794
Abstract
An extensive literature demonstrates that local campaign efforts in the UK generally pay electoral dividends for parties. As a result, rational parties focus campaign efforts most in seats where the electoral outcome is not pre-determined, and where a few more votes either way could change the result. An important indicator of where such constituencies can be found is provided by prior election results, and previous research has shown that rational parties tend to focus their campaigns most heavily on those seats where the previous election was close and less in seats where in the past they either lost badly or won comfortably. However, much less attention has been given to how local parties react to new information showing how the competitive situation in their area is changing as a general election approaches. The paper uses data from a rare set of local opinion polls conducted in around a quarter of British constituencies in the run-up to the 2015 UK General Election. Although hampered by their generally small size, limited fund-raising capacity and reliance on volunteers, local parties do respond to new information. Results indicate that parties tended to put more effort into local campaigns in seats where an opinion poll had been carried out than in otherwise similar seats where one had not. And the more competitive the poll suggested their race was, the more resources they devoted to it.
Metadata
Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. This is an author produced version of a paper subsequently published in Electoral Studies. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher's self-archiving policy. Article available under the terms of the CC-BY-NC-ND licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). |
Keywords: | campaign spending; constituency polling; British general elections |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Social Sciences (Sheffield) > Department of Politics and International Relations (Sheffield) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 13 Jul 2017 13:30 |
Last Modified: | 06 Jan 2019 01:38 |
Published Version: | http://doi.org/10.1016/j.electstud.2017.06.005 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Elsevier |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | https://doi.org/10.1016/j.electstud.2017.06.005 |