Modern constituency electioneering

the long version

In this first major study of grassroots election campaigning for thirty years, David Denver and Gordon Hands survey the evolution of campaigning over the past century and describe in detail how the parties organised their constituency campaigns in the 1992 election. The study - funded by the Economic & Social Research Council - examines and evaluates the campaign techniques that are now employed, and looks in detail at the role of local media and national party organisations. Basing their analysis mainly on a large-scale postal survey of election agents in Britain, the authors have been able to construct a quantitative measure of the strength of the constituency campaigns mounted by the different parties across the country, and to use this measure to assess the effects of local campaigning.