Pattie, C. orcid.org/0000-0003-4578-178X and Cutts, D. (2025) Volatile campaigns? The effects of shocks on campaign effectiveness in British general elections. Political Geography, 116. 103245. ISSN 0962-6298
Abstract
Some political events, such as the referendums on the UK’s continued membership of the EU in 2016, have the potential to alter substantially the electoral landscape, changing long-standing patterns of party alignment and support. Recent work suggests they also have the capacity to influence where and how much parties’ local campaign efforts might affect their support. Analysis of the fallout from the UK’s Brexit referendum suggests that after the vote, pro-Brexit parties’ campaigns yielded greater rewards the lower the local support for Brexit, while pro-Brexit parties’ campaigns became more effective where support for Brexit was higher. In this paper, we subject that claim to further scrutiny. Firstly, we employ alternative measures of campaign intensity with greater coverage of cases to assess whether the findings hold. Secondly, we broaden our understanding by looking at the campaigns of a wider range of parties than in the previous research. Thirdly, we extend the analysis to examine another political shock with major electoral consequences, the 2014 referendum on Scottish independence. Our results broadly confirm previous research findings, but we also uncover some important variations and differences. Parties do not campaign in a vacuum: no matter how professional their operations, the climate of national and local opinion affects their capacity to gain a hearing.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2024 The authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ ). |
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: | 20 Nov 2024 09:51 |
Last Modified: | 25 Nov 2024 11:24 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Elsevier |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1016/j.polgeo.2024.103245 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:219508 |