Pattie, C. and Johnston, R. (2015) Resourcing the constituency campaign in the UK. Party Politics. ISSN 1354-0688
Abstract
First-past-the-post electoral rules create strong incentives for parties to focus their campaigns on key marginal seats and much research has been devoted to the vote-winning potential of such activity. Less attention has been given to local party organisations’ ability to mount these campaigns, however. We therefore examine recent evidence of British political parties’ local campaigning capacities. Overall, Britain’s grassroots party organisations are struggling. While some local parties are resource-rich, many are not: only half of all Conservative and fewer than one in six Labour and Liberal Democrat constituency parties had an annual turnover in 2010 exceeding £25,000. Many local parties are seriously under-resourced: funds are limited, donations meagre, and members few. For most local parties, campaign resources depend primarily on their own local fund-raising initiatives – but their yields tend to be low. Even in key marginal constituencies, many local parties increasingly struggle to resource their campaign activities. What is more, there are substantial variations between the various political parties in the relative health of their constituency operations, and in the national parties’ abilities to subsidise local activities in strategically important seats. The implications for local voter mobilisation efforts in the UK are not good.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
---|---|
Authors/Creators: |
|
Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2015 SAGE Publications. This is an author produced version of a paper subsequently published in Party Politics. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher's self-archiving policy. |
Keywords: | campaigning; elections; party resources |
Dates: |
|
Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Social Sciences (Sheffield) > Department of Geography (Sheffield) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 20 May 2015 15:34 |
Last Modified: | 16 Mar 2016 01:41 |
Published Version: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1354068815605674 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | SAGE Publications |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1177/1354068815605674 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:82653 |