Campaign Expenditure and the Efficacy of Advertising at the 1974 General Election in England
| Published date | 01 March 1979 |
| DOI | 10.1111/j.1467-9248.1979.tb01191.x |
| Date | 01 March 1979 |
| Author | R. J. Johnston |
| Subject Matter | Article |
CAMPAIGN EXPENDITURE AND THE
EFFICACY OF ADVERTISING AT THE
1974
GENERAL ELECTION IN ENGLAND
R. J. JOHNSTON
University
of
Shefield
RECENT American and Canadian studies have suggested that expenditure on
advertising by parties and candidates in constituencies has a significant impact
on the voting returns.’ There has been little similar analysis of the relationship
between constituency expenditure and voting patterns at British elections.2
General arguments by Butler suggest that party canvassing activity is of little
value in terms of results, except in very tight elections; Rose has claimed that
the parties are largely irrational in their decisions on where
to
invest their
campaigning resources
;
and Kavanagh has argued that although canvassing
may have excellent psychological effects on those involved-the candidates
and the volunteer party workers-it has no effect on the
result^.^
This suggests
that at a local scale in Britain, parties are not rational vote-seekers: although
the national campaign may be very carefully orchestrated through the mass
media, the
635
local campaigns are very much random affairs.
Since detailed statistical analyses of constituency spending patterns have not
been reported for British elections, comparable investigations to those reported
for North America are introduced here, for the
1974
general elections in
England. (The study is confined to England to avoid the extra impact
of
the
nationalist
par tie^.)^
The argument advanced, however, is that the impact of
spending cannot be inferred from single cross-sectional analyses, which is the
format
of
the American studies. To obtain a true indication of the impact of
spending it is necessary to investigate relationships over time between changes
in spending and changes in voting patterns. The close proximity of the two
1974
general elections allows such analysis to be undertaken, providing a more
realistic estimate of the effect of local campaign expenditure.
CAMPAIGN EXPENDITURE AS ADVERTISING
Parties are limited in their campaign period expenditure according to the
See
W.
P. Welch, ‘The Effectiveness of Expenditure in State Legislature Races’,
American
Politics Quarterly,
4
(1976), 333-56; K.
S.
Palda ‘Does Advertising Influence Votes? An Analysis
of
the 1966 and 1970 Quebec Elections’,
Canadian Journal
of
Political Science,
6 (1973). 638-55.
*
A brief exception
is
A.
H.
Taylor, ‘The Effect of Party Organization: Correlation between
Campaign Expenditure and Voting in the 1970 Election’,
Political Studies,
20 (l972), 329-31.
D.
E.
Butler,
The Brirish General Election
oj’19.55
(London, Macmillan, 1955);
D.
E. Butler
and M. Pinto-Duschinsky,
The British General Election
of
1970
(London,
Macmillan, 1971); R.
Rose,
Influencing Voters
(London, Faber, 1967);
D.
Kavanagh,
Consiiiuency Electioneering in
Britain
(London, Longman, 1970).
40n Scotland
see
R.
J.
Johnston, ‘The Electoral Geography of an Electoral Campaign’,
Scottish Geographical Magazine,
93 (1977). 98-108.
Political
Studies,
Vol.
XXVII,
No.
1
(114-119)
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