The Impact of Electoral Context on the Electoral Effectiveness of District-Level Campaigning: Popularity Equilibrium and the Case of the 2015 British General Election
| Author | David Cutts,Edward Fieldhouse,Justin Fisher,Bettina Rottweiler |
| DOI | 10.1177/0032321718764800 |
| Date | 01 May 2019 |
| Published date | 01 May 2019 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/0032321718764800
Political Studies
2019, Vol. 67(2) 271 –290
© The Author(s) 2018
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DOI: 10.1177/0032321718764800
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The Impact of Electoral
Context on the Electoral
Effectiveness of District-Level
Campaigning: Popularity
Equilibrium and the Case of the
2015 British General Election
Justin Fisher1, David Cutts2,
Edward Fieldhouse3 and Bettina Rottweiler4
Abstract
Campaigning at the district level can deliver electoral payoffs in a range of countries despite variations
in electoral systems. However, effects may not be consistent. Campaigns do not occur in a vacuum,
and contextual factors, exogenous to the campaign activity itself, may have a significant effect on
the level of their electoral impact. The 2015 General Election in Britain is a particularly interesting
case as there was a key contextual factor which could impact significantly on the effectiveness of
the parties’ campaigns; the electoral unpopularity of the Liberal Democrats. Using a unique new
dataset, this article assesses the contextual impact of party equilibrium at both national and district
levels on campaign effectiveness. It represents the first attempt on a large scale to systematically
assess the impact of party popularity on campaign effectiveness and demonstrates at both national
and district levels the importance of contextual effects on election campaigns.
Keywords
elections, district-level campaigning, electoral context, Britain, popularity equilibrium
Accepted: 22 February 2018
Introduction
A significant academic literature has demonstrated that if effectively deployed, more
intense campaigning at the district or constituency level can deliver electoral payoffs.
Both single country and comparative studies tend to show similar patterns despite varia-
tions in electoral systems (see, for example, Denver and Hands, 1997; Fisher et al., 2011;
1Magna Carta Institute, Brunel University London, Uxbridge, UK
2Department of Political Science & International Studies, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK
3Department of Politics, The University of Manchester, Manchester, UK
4Department of Security & Crime Science, University College London, London, UK
Corresponding author:
Justin Fisher, Department of Social & Political Sciences, Brunel University London, Uxbridge UB8 3PH,
Middlesex, UK.
Email: Justin.Fisher@Brunel.ac.uk
764800PSX0010.1177/0032321718764800Political StudiesFisher et al.
research-article2018
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272 Political Studies 67(2)
Gschwend and Zittel, 2015; Karp et al., 2007; Sudulich et al., 2013).1 However, the cam-
paign effects may not necessarily be consistent in respect of electoral payoffs. Campaigns
do not occur in a vacuum, and contextual factors, exogenous to the campaign activity
itself, may have a significant effect on the level of their electoral impact (Fisher et al.,
2011). The 2015 General Election in Britain is a particularly interesting case, as compared
with previous elections, there was a key contextual factor which could impact signifi-
cantly on the effectiveness of the parties’ campaigns; the electoral popularity of the
Liberal Democrats, which had plummeted since 2010. By way of contrast, the relative
popularity of the Conservatives and Labour between the two elections of 2010 and 2015
remained largely unchanged. This provides the environment whereby we can compare the
effects of both similar and changed levels of party popularity on campaign effectiveness.
We do this by assessing the contextual impact of the popularity equilibrium (Fisher et al.,
2011) at both national and district levels. In essence, we posit that the Liberal Democrats’
dramatic decline in popularity was highly likely to limit the party’s campaign effective-
ness. We, therefore, seek to answer three questions:
1. Did the electoral effectiveness of parties’ campaigns reflect national levels of
party popularity?
2. Did the electoral effectiveness of parties’ campaigns vary by party opponent?
3. Did the electoral effectiveness of parties’ campaigns vary depending on levels of
popularity at the constituency level?
This represents the first attempt on a large scale – either in the British context or else-
where – to systematically assess the impact of party popularity on campaign effective-
ness. This makes the article significant for three principal reasons. First, it demonstrates
both conceptually and empirically how campaign effectiveness varies according to (a)
national popularity, (b) party competition and (c) local popularity. Second, it shows how
levels of electoral popularity – both low and high – impact upon the electoral effective-
ness of campaigns. Third, it demonstrates how parties seek to mitigate the effects of
electoral context and with what degree of success. In sum, the article shows both whether
campaigns are electorally effective and why this is the case.
The Popularity Equilibrium
The popularity equilibrium captures the idea that both absolute and relative levels of party
popularity will affect the electoral impact of party campaigns. In general, campaigning
will tend to be more electorally effective when elections are more marginal. But these
effects are moderated by party popularity. Campaigns will tend to deliver more electoral
benefits where parties are not unusually popular or unpopular: there is popularity equilib-
rium within the parties’ usual range of support. In other words, parties should be neither
extremely popular nor extremely unpopular – there is, in effect, a normal state of affairs
in terms of the relative popularity of the parties (Fisher et al., 2011: 818). This idea is
informed by the work of Arceneaux and Nickerson (2009), who argue that in terms of
persuading people to vote, the principal effects of mobilisation will be on those people
who on the cusp of deciding to cast their ballot. In their example (Arceneaux and
Nickerson, 2009: 5), they suggest that if mobilisation on average increases the probability
of voting by 0.07 (seven percentage points), the campaign effort will have little effect on
voters whose probability of voting is more than 0.57 or less than 0.43.
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