The changing shape of modern constituency campaigns: Part I

There is an interesting paper available online here called Constituency Campaigning in the 2005 General Election and it looks at what is happening with constituency campaigns in the UK. I’ve taken the data from the paper, inserted in the tables below and put my own spin on it. I’ll be posting up some more later but in the mean time please take a look. Also if you know how to insert tables into your wordpress posts with greater elegance than I have below please tell all.

Table 1. Aspects of traditional campaigning – all parties
	1992	1997	2001	2005
% issued traditional election address	-	97	97	97
Mean number of public meetings	2.5	1.2	0.6	0.7
Mean number of posters distributed	1850	1800	1250	1250
Mean total leaflets distributed	62000	62000	59000	72000
% undertook doorstep canvassing	83	78	70	79
Mean % of electorate canvassed on doorstep	28	22	17	21
% ‘knocked up’ on polling day	54	61	59	69
Mean number of campaign workers	52	48	35	42
Mean number of polling day workers		135	106 70	79

Looks like the public meeting is in very serious decline. This is a missed opportunity for pressure groups to use their influence on the political process when it is most effective as I don’t think that this is a case of candidates being unwilling to do them. I can’t think of an occasion where a candidate has been ungrateful of an audience at election time.

I also think the decline of doorstep canvassing is serious because the voters actually meeting the candidates rather then seeing a rubbish photo on a risograph is simply more effective. But we should not think there was some canvassing golden age as even in 1992 only 28% of the electorate were canvassed.

Considering the fall in the number of activists the remaining ones seem to be doing a pretty good job. Great Britain isn’t ready to fully succumb to the slumber of political apathy just yet

Table 2. Campaign and Polling Day Workers (mean)
	Campaign workers					Polling Day workers
	1992	1997	2001	2005		1992	1997	2001	2005
Con	92	57	61	84		262	134	121	161
Lab	50	55	32	27		124	127	70	51
Lib Dem	30	33	20	26		65	62	32	45

2001 illustrates that a foregone election will see activism tumble. It also shows the limits of activism as the Conservatives has nearly twice as many campaign workers as Labour yet still got slaughtered when the results came in.

Personally I was somewhat surprised to see that the conservatives have the largest numbers of activists even in their nadir election of 1997 and in the close election of 1992 there activist advantage could well of help them win rather than any Labour tax bombshell as Chris Pattern may have put it.

Iraq has to be a substantial part of the explanation in the decline of Labour activism between 2001 and 2005 but we should not diminish the importance of the fall between 1997 and 2001 when Iraq couldn’t have been the explanation. I think we have to get better as a party at involving members and supporters and in particular we need to get better in getting them more active.

I think that questions should be asked as to why Labour has about twice as many members of the Lib Dems if memory serves me correctly yet can only must marginally more campaign workers in the average seat.