Political Advertising and the Geography of Voting in England at the 1983 General Election

At each general election in Britain, the political parties spend money on both their national campaign and the individual campaign in each constituency. For the latter, there are limits on the amount that can be spent, determined by the type of constituency and its number of voters. This paper presents and tests models suggesting how the parties should spend money on advertising across the constituencies—the geography of spending—and how that spending should influence the result—the geography of voting. Results show that where parties spent did not seem especially rational, but that spending had a significant impact on the distribution of votes.