Conclusion: Whether the campaign mattered and how

Parliamentary Affairs

Volumn 58, Issue 4, 2005, Pages 214-231

  Wlezien, Christopher ^a   Norris, Pippa ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 27144509317     PISSN: 00312290     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/pa/gsi070     Document Type: Review

References (40)

1. H. Clarke, D. Sanders, M. Stewart and P. Whiteley, Political Choice in Britain, Oxford University Press, 2004.
2. T. Holbrook, Do Campaigns Matter?, Sage, 1996;
3. J.E. Campbell, The American Campaign: US Presidential Campaigns and the National Vote, Texas A&M University Press, 2000.
4. See, e.g. R. Johnston, A. Blais, H.E. Brady and J. Crete, Letting the People Decide: Dynamics of a Canadian Election, McGill-Queen's Press, 1992.
5. Also see R. Johnston, M.G. Hagen and K. Hall Jamieson, The 2000 Presidential Election and the Foundations of Party Politics, Cambridge University Press, 2004.
6. For a detailed exposition of different models of campaign effects, see C. Wlezien and R.S. Erikson, 'The Timeline of Presidential Election Campaigns', 64 Journal of Politics, 2002, pp. 969-93.
7. The BBC poll tracker site is: http://news.bbc.co.Uk/1/shared/vote2005/ polltracker/html/polltracker.stm; the MORI compilation is at: http://www.mori.com/polls/trends/voting-allpub.shtml.
8. R.P. Daves, 'Who Will Vote? Ascertaining Likelihood to Vote and Modeling a Probable Electorate in Preelection Polls' in P. Lavrakas and M. Traugott (eds), Election Polls, the News Media and Democracy, Chatham House, 2000.
9. For more information on the methodologies employed by the different survey organisations, see the BBC website:http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/ uk_politics/vote_2005/basics/4275273.stm.
10. For surveys in the field for an even number of days, the fractional midpoint is rounded up to the following day. There is a good amount of variance in the number of days surveys are in the field: The mean number of days in the field is 3.06; the standard deviation is 1.09 days.
11. Note that polls on successive days are not truly independent. Although they do not share respondents, they do share overlapping polling periods - the periods during with surveys are in the field. Thus, poll results reported on neighboring days will, by definition, capture much of the same information.
12. Specifically, the probability that the movement is due to chance is less than one-in-a-hundred.
13. The smoothed series were generated using the 'lowess' (locally weighted scatterplot smoothing) procedure. This procedure creates a new value for each time point based on the results of regressions using a designated number of surrounding data points. To generate the new value, predictions from these regressions are weighted based on their temporal distance from the particular point in question. Lowess tends to follow the data quite well, though the degree to which it does depends on the bandwidth, or share of time points in the full series, one uses to generate the smoothed values. For this exercise, a bandwidth of 0.3, which means that (a rolling) 30% of the cases was used to generate each point. See W. Jacoby, Statistical Graphics for Univariate and Bivariate Data, Sage, 1997.
14. For applications to preelection polls, see R.S. Erikson and C. Wlezien, 'Presidential Polls as a Time Series: The Case of 1996', 63 Public Opinion Quarterly, 1999, pp. 163-77.
15. This is what the British Election Studies shows among likely voters, i.e. those scoring a '10' on their likelihood of voting scale: http://www.essex.ac. uk/bes/, though they overstated Labour's share at the end by about 1%. All of the other polls also overstated Labour's share
16. see http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/vote2005/polltracker/html/polltracker. stm - except for NOP, who were spot on.
17. Data are drawn from the MORI on-line compilation: http://www.mori.com/ polls/trends/voting-allpub.shtml. We exactly followed the procedures used with the 2005 polls, described in the text above.
18. Wlezien and Erikson, 'Presidential Polls as a Time Series: The Case of 1996', 63 Public Opinion Quarterly, 1999, pp. 163-77. op. cit.
19. C. Wlezien and R.S. Erikson, 'Campaign Effects in Theory and Practice', 29 American Politics Research, 2001, pp. 419-36.
20. To generate these estimates, we simulate the voting day results at the constituency level, using Pippa Norris' British Parliamentary Constituency Database, 1992-2005 at: http://ksghome.harvard.edu/~pnorris/datafiles/ Britain%20Votes%202006%20Resources.htm. Specifically, we assume uniform swing and adjust the results in each constituency based on the changes in preferences from our exercise: (1) we subtracted 1.16% from Labour; (2) added 2.76% to the Conservatives; and (3) subtracted 3.25% from the Liberal Democrats.
21. See E. Gidengil, A. Blais, N. Nevitte and R. Nadeau, 'Priming and Campaign Effects: Evidence from Recent Canadian Elections' in D. Farrell and R. Schmitt-Beck (eds), Do Political Campaigns Matter? Campaign Effects in Elections and Referendums, Routledge, 2002.
22. Also see the review in J.N. Druckman and J. W. Holmes, 'Does Presidential Rhetoric Matter? Priming and Presidential Approval', 34 Presidential Studies Quarterly, 2004, pp. 755-78.
23. Http://www.icmresearch.co.uk/reviews/pollreviews.asp.
24. For more specifics relating to their sampling and weighting methods, see the results pages for any of the specific polls on the ICM website: http://www.icmresearch.co.uk/reviews/pollreviews.asp.
25. See A. Campbell, P.E. Converse, W.E. Miller and D.E. Stokes, The American Voter, Wiley, 1960.
26. Vote intention even appears to influence people's perceptions of the economic future and past. See C. Wlezien, M.N. Franklin and D. Twiggs, 'Economic Perceptions and Vote Choice: Disentangling the Endogeneity', 19 Political Behavior, 1997, pp. 7-17.
27. It also appears to structure issue positions as well. See G. Evans and R. Andersen, 'Do Issues Decide? Partisan Conditioning and Perceptions of Party Issue Positions across the Electoral Cycle', 14 British Elections & Parties Review, 2004, pp. 18-39.
28. Note that, due to rounding, the numbers in Table 1 do somewhat understate change in vote intention in the ICM polls.
29. See the MORI website: http://www.mori.com/polls/trends/issues12.shtml.
30. The BES internet rolling campaign data also reveals little change in issue importance during the campaign.
31. See A.F. Heath, R.M. Jowell and J.K. Curtice, The Rise of New Labour: Party Policies and Voter Choices, Oxford University Press, 2001.
32. and Clarke, Sanders, Stewart and Whiteley, The Rise of New Labour: Party Policies and Voter Choices, 2001, op. cit.
33. A. Gelman and G. King, 'Why are American Presidential Election Polls so Variable When Votes are so Predictable?', British Journal of Political Science, 1993, pp. 409-51.
34. Also see the extensive examination of campaign communication in P. Norris, J. Curtice, D. Sanders, M. Scammell and H. Semetko, On Message: Communicating the Campaign, Sage, 1999.
35. See Clarke, Sanders, Stewart and Whiteley, On Message: Communicating the Campaign, 1999. op. cit.
36. Perhaps the party's promises on tax relief for the elderly really paid off.
37. Conservative support among the lower middle class (C1) did drop during the campaign, from a level that actually was above that for the upper middle and middle classes (A/B) to one in between that for A/B and the working classes. In one sense, support early on was 'too high' given the underlying class structure and the national political context.
38. G. Evans (ed.), The End of Class Politics? Class Voting in Comparative Context, Oxford University Press, 1999.
39. See D. Sanders, 'The Political Economy of UK Party Support, 1997-2004: Forecasts for the 2005 General Election', 15 Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties, 2005, pp. 47-71.
40. For a similar approach to US presidential elections, see J.E. Campbell, 'The Fundamentals in US Presidential Elections: Public Opinion, the Economy and Incumbency in the 2004 Presidential Election', 15 Journal of Elections, Public Opinion, and Parties, 2005, pp. 73-83.