Postmodern asset or misfiring problem? The UK Conservative Party’s constituency election campaign, 1997-2024

Abstract

The British Conservatives are one of the most successful election-winning parties in the world. But for many years their constituency campaigns formed a weak link in their armoury. Campaigning was often poorly targeted, with the greatest effort expended in the party’s safest seats, amassing large majorities but not winning more MPs. And the party’s grassroots membership tends to be older and less active in campaigns than its rivals’. Internal party reforms since the early 2000s have sought to address some of these shortcomings. But to what effect? In this paper, we look at the efficiency and effectiveness of the Conservatives’ constituency campaigns over the quarter century from the 1997 to the 2024 UK General Elections. We show that, over time, the party has become a more focussed and efficient campaigner. But anomalies remain and the modern Conservatives still face challenges in how to organise and run their local campaign operations.

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Item Type:	Article
Authors/Creators:	Pattie, C. https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4578-178X Cutts, D.
Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information:	© 2025 The Author(s). This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
Keywords:	Conservative Party; election campaigning; electoral geography
Dates:	Accepted: 21 July 2025 Published (online): 2 August 2025 Published: 2 August 2025
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:	25 Jul 2025 11:58
Last Modified:	04 Aug 2025 08:58
Status:	Published online
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan
Refereed:	Yes
Identification Number:	10.1057/s41293-025-00291-8
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID):	oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:229527

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Postmodern asset or misfiring problem? The UK Conservative Party’s constituency election campaign, 1997-2024

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