Tactical Voting and Party Constituency Campaigning at the 1992 General Election in England

British Journal of Political Science

Volumn 26, Issue 3, 1996, Pages 403-418

  Fieldhouse, E A ^a   Pattie, C J ^b   Johnston, R J ^c  

^a UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER   (United Kingdom)

^b UNIVERSITY OF SHEFFIELD   (United Kingdom)

^c UNIVERSITY OF BRISTOL   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 85015026426     PISSN: 00071234     EISSN: 14692112     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0007123400007511     Document Type: Article

References (22)

1. B. Sarlvik and I. Crewe, Decade of Dealignment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983); M. Franklin, The Decline of Class Voting in Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985).
2. D. Butler and D. Kavanagh, The British General Election of 1987 (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1988); N. Fishman and A. Shaw, ‘TV87: The Campaign to Make Tactical Voting Make Votes Count’, in I. Crewe and M. Harrop, eds, Political Communications: The General Election Campaign of 1987 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989).
3. J. W. Galbraith and N. C. Rae, ‘A Test of the Importance of Tactical Voting: Great Britain, 1987’, British Journal of Political Science, 19 (1989), 126-37; J. Curtice and M. Steed, ‘Analysis’, in Butler and Kavanagh, The British General Election of 1987; J. Curtice and M. Steed, ‘The Results Analysed’ in D. Butler and D. Kavanagh, The British General Election of 1992 (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1992).
4. R. J. Johnston and C. J. Pattie, ‘Tactical Voting in Britain in 1983 and 1987: An Alternative Approach’, British Journal of Political Science, 21 (1991), 95-128.
5. Johnston and Pattie, ‘Tactical Voting in Britain in 1983 and 1987’, p. 104.
6. Butler and Kavanagh, The British General Election of 1987, p. 266; Butler and Kavanagh, The British General Election of 1992, p. 280.
7. H. Catt, ‘Individual Behaviour Versus Collective Outcomes: The Case of Tactical Voting’, Politics, 10(1990), 17-24.
8. W. L. Miller, D. Broughton, N. Sonntag and D. Mclean, ‘Political Change in Britain During the 1987 Campaign’, in Crewe and Harrop, eds, Political Communications; W. L. Miller, H. D. Clarke, M. Harrop. L. LeDuc and P. Whiteley, How Voters Change (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990). These employed survey data based on a panel of voters interviewed throughout the 1987 campaign.
9. A. Heath, R. Jowell, J. Curtice, G. Evans, J. Field and S. Witherspoon, Understanding Political Change (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1991), p. 53. Estimates from most aggregate data are remarkably close to this. However, one study put the estimated proportion of tactical voters at the 1987 election as high as 17 per cent: R. Niemi, G. Whitten and M. Franklin, ‘Constituency Characteristics, Individual Characteristics and Tactical Voting in the 1987 British General Election’, British Journal of Political Science, 22 (1992), 229-40. This has been severely criticized on grounds of measurement error: G. Evans and A. Heath, ‘A Tactical Error in the Analysis of Tactical Voting’, British Journal of Political Science, 23 (1993), 131-7.
10. Heath et al., Understanding Political Change, p. 56.
11. G. Evans, ‘Tactical Voting and Labour's Prospects’, in A. Heath, R. Jowell and J. Curtice, eds, Labour's Last Chance? (Aldershot: Dartmouth Press, 1994).
12. D. Kavanagh, Constituency Electioneering in Britain (London: Longman, 1970).
13. R. T. Holt and J. E. Turner, Political Parties in Action: The Battle of Barons Court (New York: Free Press, 1968); J. Bochel and D. Denver, ‘Canvassing, Turnout and Party Support: An Experiment’, British Journal of Political Science, 1 (1971), 257-69; J. Bochel and D. Denver, ‘The Impact of the Campaign on the Results of Local Government Elections’, British Journal of Political Science, 2(1972), 239-60.
14. P. Seyd and P. Whiteley, Labour's Grass Roots (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992); P. Seyd and P. Whiteley, ‘The Labour Vote and Local Activism: The Impact of Local Constituency Campaigns’, Parliamentary Affairs, 45 (1992), 582-95; P. Whiteley and P. Seyd, ‘Local Party Campaigning and Electoral Mobilization in Britain’, Journal of Politics, 56 (1994), 242-52.
15. See G. Jacobson, ‘The Effects of Campaign Spending in Congressional Elections’, American Political Science Review, 72 (1978), 469-91; and G. Jacobson, ‘The Effects of Campaign Spending in House Elections: New Evidence for Old Arguments’. American Journal of Political Science, 34 (1990), 334-62. However, see also D. P. Green and J. S. Krasno, ‘Salvation for the Spendthrift Incumbent: The Effects of Campaign Spending in House Elections’, American Journal of Political Science, 32 (1988), 884-907; and D. P. Green and J. S. Krasno, ‘Rebuttal to Jacobson's ‘New Evidence for Old Arguments’, American Journal of Political Science, 34 (1990), 363-72.
16. C. J. Pattie, P. F. Whiteley, R. J. Johnston, and P. Seyd, ‘Measuring Local Campaign Effects: Labour Party Constituency Campaigning at the 1987 General Election’, Political Studies, 42 (1994), 469-79; see also D. Denver and G. Hands, ‘Measuring the Intensity and Effectiveness of Constituency Campaigning in the 1992 General Election’, in D. Denver, P. Norris, D. Broughton and C. Railings, British Elections and Parties Yearbook, 1993 (London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1993).
17. Examples include: D. Denver and G. Hands, ‘Marginality and Turnout in British General Elections’, British Journal of Political Science, 4 (1974), 17-35; D. Denver and G. Hands, ‘Marginality and Turnout in British General Elections in the 1970s’, British Journal of Political Science, 15 (1985), 381-8; R. J. Johnston. ‘Campaign Spending and Votes: A Reconsideration’, Public Choice, 33 (1979), 83-92; R. J. Johnston, ‘Campaign Spending and the Efficacy of Advertising at the 1974 General Election in England’, Political Studies, 27 (1979), 114-19.
18. Galbraith and Rae, ‘A Test of the Importance of Tactical Voting’, p. 132.
19. R. J. Johnston and C. J. Pattie, ‘Great Britain: Twentieth Century Parties Operating under Nineteenth Century Regulations’, in A. B. Gunlicks, ed., Campaign and Party Finance in North America and Western Europe (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1993).
20. More information on this approach can be found in R. J. Johnston and A. Hay, ‘On the Parameters of Uniform Swing in Single-Member Constituency Electoral Systems’, Environment and Planning A, 14 (1982), 61-74, and in R. J. Johnston and C. J. Pattie, ‘Using an Entropy-Maximising Procedure to Estimate Territorial Social Indicators: An Introduction and Illustration’, Social Indicators Research, 27 (1992), 235-56.
21. Evans, ‘Tactical Voting and Labour's Prospects’.
22. Evans, ‘Tactical Voting and Labour's Prospects’.