Party knowledge and candidate knowledge: Constituency campaigning and voting and the 1997 British General Election

Charles J. Pattie*, Ron J. Johnston

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

23 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

There has been a recent resurgence of interest in the electoral impact of constituency campaigns in British General Elections. Much is now known about the electoral consequences of local campaigns on parties' constituency vote shares. Yet more remains to be discovered about the impacts of these local campaigns on voters' knowledge of parties and candidates. Analysis of data from the 1997 British General Election demonstrates that the local campaign is associated with improved voter knowledge of who is standing for each party in a constituency, which is, in its turn, associated with an increased chance of voting for the party in the election, other things being equal. Campaign efforts at different scales, from the national to the local, have different impacts on voters' knowledge.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)795-819
Number of pages25
JournalElectoral Studies
Volume23
Issue number4
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Dec 2004

Keywords

  • Candidate effects
  • Local campaigns
  • Voter knowledge

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