- Email: [email protected]
Labour’s targeted constituency campaigning: nationally directed or locally produced?
Electoral Studies 23 (2004) 709–726 www.elsevier.com/locate/electstud
Labour’s targeted constituency campaigning: nationally directed or locally produced? David Denver ∗, Gordon Hands Department of Politics and International Relations, Lancaster University, Lancaster, LA1 4YL, UK
Abstract Along with a number of other researchers, Patrick Seyd and Paul Whiteley have consistently argued that constituency campaigning in Britain influences constituency election outcomes. In recent work, however, they have denied that the major efforts made by the Labour Party’s national headquarters to target resources and expertise into key seats in the 1997 general election was effective and that, as a consequence, the party had better results in these seats than elsewhere. Using various measures of campaign intensity, however, it is clear that target constituencies did have significantly stronger Labour campaigns than comparable constituencies that were not nationally targeted. Multivariate analysis also suggests that Labour’s performance in targeted seats was better than in comparable seats. 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Campaigning; Constituencies; Labour Party; Party members
1. Introduction Over the past 10 years or so, using different approaches and different types of data, a number of groups of researchers have argued that, contrary to the view which prevailed among British commentators throughout the post-war period, constituency campaigning in general elections has had a significant impact on constituency results. Patrick Seyd and Paul Whiteley are firmly in this revisionist camp and have based most of their analyses on a series of surveys of members of the major political parties. Their most recent contributions, for example, focus on the Labour Party and are based on a survey of party members conducted in 1997. Respondents were asked
∗
Corresponding author. Tel.: +44-152-459-4267; fax: +44-152-459-4238. E-mail address: [email protected] (D. Denver).
0261-3794/$ - see front matter 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.electstud.2003.10.005
710
D. Denver, G. Hands / Electoral Studies 23 (2004) 709–726
about their campaigning-related activities and Seyd and Whiteley use the relevant responses to construct an index of campaign activism for each constituency in their sample. They then show that there is a positive association between this index and Labour’s performance in the 1997 general election (Seyd and Whiteley, 2002; Whiteley and Seyd, 2003). Our own work on this issue has been largely based on post-election surveys of local party agents and other campaign organisers (see, for example, Denver and Hands, 1997; Denver et al., 2003). We have argued that during the 1990s relevant officials in the parties’ national organisations became more convinced than ever of the importance of constituency campaigning. As a result, they began to target expertise and other resources much more effectively than before on key seats—the relatively small number of constituencies that might change hands in an election and in which, consequently, the outcomes of general elections as a whole are decided. As it has come to be acknowledged that the quality of constituency campaigning makes a difference, there has been a tendency for the planning and management of constituency campaigns to come under the control of national party headquarters and national officials have been very active in seeking to improve the quality of campaigns mounted by local constituencies. Essentially, we have argued three propositions: 앫 the national organisations of the parties have sought to take greater control of campaigns in key constituencies and to incorporate them into their overall campaign strategies; 앫 as a consequence, resources of various kinds have been focused on nationallyidentified target seats and the campaigns in these seats have been stronger both than they otherwise would have been and than campaigns in non-targeted seats; and 앫 the parties’ electoral performance in constituencies has been significantly related to their local campaign effort—better campaigns produce better results. These propositions are best exemplified by the Labour Party and especially by Labour’s approach to the 1997 election. For that election, Labour developed a sophisticated and ambitious strategy for constituency campaigning (known as ‘Operation Victory’) which involved the ruthless targeting of resources upon 91 pre-selected target seats. All other seats—dubbed ‘majority seats’—were expected to run high profile but low-cost and low-resource campaigns. Party members in the majority seats were strongly encouraged to help the campaigns in nearby target seats. Labour won the election handsomely, of course, and within the party organisation Operation Victory was widely credited with making a major contribution to the party’s triumph (Denver and Hands, 1998; Denver et al., 1998). While Seyd and Whiteley have argued strongly in favour of the revisionist position on the question of the electoral impact of constituency campaigning, they have diverged quite sharply in one important respect from the line of argument which we have proposed. In New Labour’s Grassroots (Seyd and Whiteley, 2002) and elsewhere (Whiteley and Seyd, 1998, 2003) they acknowledge that in the 1997 general election Labour’s central organisation put a major effort into trying to strengthen
D. Denver, G. Hands / Electoral Studies 23 (2004) 709–726
711
campaigns in the target seats and, as already indicated, they reinforce their previous evidence about the impact of local campaigning. On the other hand, Seyd and Whiteley deny the second of the three propositions set out above, arguing that attempts by the central party to target campaigning resources and expertise into a limited number of key seats were actually unsuccessful. Variations in the strength of campaigns across constituencies, they contend, had nothing to do with the central targeting strategy but were produced by the varying assessments and actions of party members on the ground. It is on this specific contention—that the attempts of Labour’s central campaign organisation to build stronger campaigns in target constituencies were ineffective—that this article is focused. It is worth noting, however, that this contention becomes the basis for a wider argument in New Labour’s Grassroots about the role and significance of party members. Seyd and Whiteley warn that the magnitude of local campaign effects ‘suggests that parties which neglect and discourage their activists in the belief that they play only a ritualistic role in electioneering, are likely to pay a significant price in terms of seats lost in a general election’ (p. 136). In the concluding chapter of the book they go on to criticise the ‘New’ Labour leadership under Tony Blair for losing touch with the rank and file of the party and issue dire warnings, very much in an ‘Old’ Labour vein, about the policies being pursued by the government first elected in 1997.
2. Seyd and Whiteley’s argument in detail Seyd and Whiteley’s argument that Labour’s national targeting strategy was ineffective in 1997 is based on two main pieces of evidence. First, they present data from their survey of party members showing the extent to which members campaigned in seats other than their own. As part of Labour’s attempt to focus resources where they would make most difference, party members were urged by the central campaign organisation to do campaign work in the seats that had been identified as targets. Seyd and Whiteley asked their respondents whether they had been asked to work in another constituency, whether they had done so and, if so, how much time they had spent working in that constituency. In response, 28% said that they were asked to work in another constituency, and 9% said that they actually did so but only 3.5% said that they worked in another constituency for most or all of the time during the campaign. Seyd and Whiteley conclude from these figures that the national party’s targeting efforts were unsuccessful: ‘Despite the great emphasis placed on targeting by the party headquarters in Millbank, the strategy was not implemented effectively’ (2002, p. 120). As a second piece of evidence to support their argument, Seyd and Whiteley point out that despite all the extra effort and resources that were poured into its target seats by Labour in the 1997 election, Labour’s performance in these seats was similar to its performance in some groups of seats that were not targeted. In the earlier article in which they present the same line of argument they quote an Early Day Motion in the House of Commons, set down by Ken Livingstone and others shortly after the 1997 election, which drew attention to the fact that although the swing to
712
D. Denver, G. Hands / Electoral Studies 23 (2004) 709–726
Labour in the 91 target seats was 11.8%, the average for all seats was only a little smaller at 9.9%, and that ‘in the 54 non-target seats which were won by the Labour party without any centralised assistance from Millbank Tower [Labour’s national headquarters] the swing to Labour was 14.3 per cent’ (Whiteley and Seyd, 1998, p. 191). In New Labour’s Grassroots, Seyd and Whiteley are less precise, citing an elementary analysis by Curtice and Steed showing that there was little difference in Labour’s performance between targets and ‘other types’ of seats (pp. 113–115). The implication—which is spelled out by Seyd and Whiteley—is that targeting by the central party organisation made no difference to constituency outcomes. Seyd and Whiteley suggest that if national-level targeting was effective then the evidence relating to party performance gives rise to a paradox. If targeting worked as intended, and if (as they agree) better constituency campaigning results in a better performance, then how is the fact that Labour performed at least as well in a significant number of non-target seats as in its targets to be explained? Their answer to this conundrum is that there was indeed targeting and that targeting made a difference to results, but that ‘targeting was not in response to the directives from party headquarters. Rather it was organised by members themselves at the grassroots level’ (2002, p. 121). They go on to elaborate this point, suggesting that ‘Nationally directed and locally-directed campaigning are different things. In general, activists appear to make up their own minds about where to campaign, and they do so mostly in their own areas. There is a relationship between campaigning and marginality … but by and large this is because constituency parties in marginal seats are fairly active, not because of an influx of Labour activists from other constituencies’ (p. 121). In the remainder of this paper we investigate the claims made by Seyd and Whiteley, and contest the conclusions that they draw. We focus mainly on the 1997 election but, in addition, also provide evidence relating to the 2001 election when Labour once again mounted a highly-targeted campaign in accordance with a national strategy code-named ‘Operation Turnout’.
3. The movement of campaign workers into target seats First, we consider Seyd and Whiteley’s claim that their data on the extent to which party members campaigned in seats (presumably targets) other than their own show that the national party’s targeting strategy was not effective. The first point to note here is that Seyd and Whiteley appear to underestimate the significance of their own data. It is true that at first glance the percentages of members reporting having campaigned in other seats look rather small but this is misleading. The numbers of people represented by the percentage figures are actually very considerable. As we have seen, Seyd and Whiteley report that 3.5% of their respondents spent most or all of their time working in other seats. This, they tell us, is equivalent to 14,000 members (since the party had roughly 400,000 members in 1997). If all of these 14,000 were campaigning in one of the 91 Labour targets that would mean that there would have been, on average, 154 campaigners from elsewhere working
D. Denver, G. Hands / Electoral Studies 23 (2004) 709–726
713
most of the time in each target seat. The 9% of respondents who spent at least some of the time working in other seats would translate into 396 per target seat. By any reckoning these are very large numbers in the context of British constituency campaigns. Our own data, based on reports by local party agents immediately after the 1997 election, suggest that the mean number of campaign workers in Labour’s target seats on a typical day during the campaign was 81 (N = 65). No doubt the numbers involved over the three to four weeks of the campaign would have been larger, since different people would work on different days. Nonetheless, if a target seat received an influx of around 150 campaign workers from neighbouring constituencies, even some of the time during the campaign, then clearly that would represent a massive addition to the available workforce. To repeat the point: it may be that the percentage of party members who answered the call to campaign in target seats seems relatively small but in absolute terms the numbers are very large. Thus, Seyd and Whiteley appear to seriously underestimate the real-world significance of their own results since the impact on the ground of the numbers involved would have been huge. Our 1997 survey also provides some further evidence related to campaign workers transferring to target seats. We asked election agents whether volunteers were sent into their constituency from neighbouring seats on polling day and also whether they sent volunteers to neighbouring constituencies. This evidence relates only to transfers of workers on polling day and not earlier in the campaign. Further, our data will exclude people who worked in target seats rather than their own constituency without the knowledge of the relevant agents but will include volunteers who were not party members. In Table 1 we compare the figures for target seats with those for seats already held and not targeted and also for seats which were not held and not targeted. The results are very striking. Almost all campaigns in target seats reported receiving volunteers on polling day while there was hardly any movement from targets into non-targets. While these data tell us nothing about the numbers of volunteers involved, they nonetheless offer powerful initial evidence that in this respect Labour’s national targeting strategy was indeed effective on the ground. One final point about campaign workers needs to be made. It is undoubtedly the case that Labour headquarters attached considerable importance to getting volunteers to work in target seats. Thus, the introduction to the party’s 1997 General Election Table 1 Movement of polling day volunteers between target and non-target seats in 1997
% Received volunteers % Sent volunteers Volunteer transfer index (N)
Held not target %
Target %
Not held not target %
6 82 ⫺78 (168)
97 6 +91 (65)
8 65 ⫺57 (222)
Note: The ‘volunteer transfer index’ is the percentage of campaigns which received volunteer workers minus the percentage which sent volunteers elsewhere.
714
D. Denver, G. Hands / Electoral Studies 23 (2004) 709–726
Handbook states that ‘we want every single Labour party member to become involved in the campaign to win in the key seats (Labour Party, no date, p. 3), and elsewhere the Handbook stresses the need to run campaigns in non-target seats ‘with minimal numbers of volunteers’ (p. 31). It would surely not be suggested, however, that ensuring a large number of campaign workers was the only thing that mattered in mounting a strong campaign. Yet this is what seems to be implied by Seyd and Whiteley’s argument. If other aspects of campaigning are also important, as is surely the case, we cannot judge the success or otherwise of Labour’s targeting strategy simply on the basis of the movements of campaign workers between seats. A much wider range of evidence needs to be explored.
4. Did target constituencies have stronger campaigns? The central claim made by Seyd and Whiteley is that the attempts of Labour headquarters to focus resources on target constituencies did not work. We test this claim directly by comparing the strength or intensity of Labour campaigns in relevant constituencies using three different and independent measures of campaign strength. 앫 The first is an index of campaign intensity which we have developed in our studies of constituency campaigning in the last three general elections.1 The index is based on responses by constituency election agents/organisers to a range of questions about such things as campaign organisation, canvassing, use of computers and telephones, leafleting and polling day organisation, as well as the numbers of campaign workers. Scores on this index are available only for those campaigns which responded to our surveys, of course, but the response rate for Labour campaigns was 72% in 1997 and 69% in 2001. 앫 A second measure is based on campaign spending in the constituencies—specifically the amount that a party spent as a percentage of the maximum allowed. This has commonly been used as an indicator of the strength of campaigns (see, for example, Pattie and Johnston, 2003) and is, indeed, used by Seyd and Whiteley themselves in New Labour’s Grassroots (pp. 127–32). Clearly this is not a direct measure of campaign strength but it is a reasonable surrogate indicator. It has the advantages of being easily available and available for (virtually) all constituency campaigns and is, of course, completely independent of our survey-derived index of campaign strength. 앫 Finally we have derived a third measure, relating to the impact of campaigning upon individual electors, using data from the British Election Study (BES) surveys of 1997 and 2001. The 1997 BES survey included questions asking whether respondents had been canvassed, and by which party, and also whether they had been contacted by telephone. Following Whiteley and Seyd (2002), we computed
1 For details of the original index see Denver and Hands (1997, pp. 246–52). The index used here is an updated version, for which see Denver et al. (2002).
D. Denver, G. Hands / Electoral Studies 23 (2004) 709–726
715
for each respondent a simple additive index for Labour party contact, scoring 0 or 1 for each form of contact. This produces for each respondent a party contact index score ranging from 0 to 2. We then calculated the mean scores for Labour contacts in constituencies for which there were ten or more BES respondents. This index gives us a third, independent measure of campaigning strength although, given the sampling procedures of the BES, the number of constituencies for which it is available is very small. We have also constructed a similar index of Labour party contact in the 2001 election. Before we can compare constituencies in respect of these measures of campaign strength, however, there is a problem to be resolved. In order to assess the effectiveness of targeting we need to determine which seats the target constituencies are to be compared with. As we have seen, Seyd and Whiteley are rather vague on this point. On the one hand, they clearly want to argue that strong campaigns will be found in seats other than those on the party’s national target list—which suggests that we should compare those nationally targeted with some other group of seats. But which other group? It would not be helpful, we suggest, to compare targets with all other seats since the latter would include a large number of seats that were either very safe or hopeless for the party, and in those we would expect local campaigns to be particularly weak. For the same reason, it would not make sense to use either all of the non-target seats which Labour already held or all of the non-target seats the party did not hold as a comparator group. But to use the approach exemplified in the Early Day Motion referred to above also seems unsatisfactory, since that involved selecting a group of non-target seats in which Labour did very well and ‘selecting out’ seats of comparable safeness or marginality which Labour did not win. This suggests a solution, however, which is to compare the 1997 targets with the seats in which, on estimates of the 1992 result,2 Labour was closest to the winning party but which were not on the party’s target list whether, in the event, these were won or not. We might call these ‘non-targeted possibles’. On the other hand, as we have seen Seyd and Whiteley claim that ‘targeting was … organised by the members themselves at the grassroots level’ and go on to acknowledge that ‘there is a relationship between campaigning and marginality’ (2002, p. 121). The problem here is that if local targeting was in response to activists’ assessments of constituency marginality, then local targets and national targets would be likely to overlap very substantially—the only exceptions would probably be seats where activists had local knowledge or concerns, for example about particular candidates or the tactical situation in three-cornered fights. So how can we test Seyd and Whiteley’s claim? We may be able to do so if we differentiate within the (national) target seats between those which were more and those which were less marginal. If the strength of campaigning in constituencies is determined by local activists’ assess2 There was a major redrawing of constituency boundaries between 1992 and 1997 so that all analyses of changes in party performances are based on the widely-used estimates provided by Rallings and Thrasher (1995) of what the vote distributions in the constituencies would have been in 1992 had the 1997 boundaries been in operation.
716
D. Denver, G. Hands / Electoral Studies 23 (2004) 709–726
ments of constituency marginality, then we might expect to find the strongest campaigns in the more marginal targets, rather less strong campaigns in the less marginal targets, and still weaker campaigns in the ‘non-targeted possibles’. By contrast, if our claim that national targeting is the crucial determinant of campaign strength is correct, then we would expect to find relatively little difference between the two categories of targets, but clearly weaker campaigns in the non-targeted possibles. For the 1997 election, then, we focus on three groups of seats: ‘top targets’, ‘secondary targets’ and ‘non-targeted possibles’. We take the 45 target seats which needed the smallest swings to be won as the top targets, the remaining 46 as secondary targets and the next 50 seats in terms of winnability as non-targeted possibles. In addition, since activists might have ‘locally’ targeted seats which were narrowly held by Labour, we also provide data for the fifty most marginal Labour-held seats not on the national target list. Table 2 shows mean scores on the three measures of campaign intensity for all four groups of seats. It can be seen that in each case scores for the two types of targets are very similar but there is a clear decline between secondary targets and non-targeted possibles. Campaigns in Labour-held marginals were also clearly weaker than those in the nationally targeted seats. The evidence indicates, then, that contrary to Seyd and Whiteley’s argument the national targeting strategy did result in more intense campaigns in the nationally-targeted seats than in other comparable seats, and there is also no evidence of a gradual decline in campaign strength across targets and non-targeted possibles. Although Seyd and Whiteley have not yet reported results for the 2001 general election, we have replicated our analysis of campaign intensity for that election. In this case, Labour had many more target seats (148)—now renamed ‘priority seats’— all but two of which had been gained in 1997. The party already had a huge majority in Parliament and could hardly expect to gain very many (if any) more seats and Table 2 Labour campaign intensity in target and comparable non-target seats, 1997
Campaign intensity index (N) Campaign expenditure (N) BES index of Labour contact (N)
Top targets
Secondary targets
Non-targeted possibles
Labour-held marginals
153.0
151.7
132.1
126.1
(33) 92.9 (45) 0.403
(32) 93.1 (46) 0.484
(39) 88.8 (50) 0.210
(34) 84.3 (50) 0.306
(6)
(12)
(8)
(13)
Note: The figures shown are means. In this and Table 3 the significance of the differences between means is tested using the ANOVA procedure. Here, the two target categories differ significantly (p ⬍ 0.05) from the other two in respect of campaign intensity and Labour-held marginals are significantly different from the other three groups in respect of expenditure. Given the small numbers involved, it is no surprise that the differences in the index of contact are not statistically significant.
D. Denver, G. Hands / Electoral Studies 23 (2004) 709–726
717
Table 3 Labour campaign intensity in target and comparable non-target seats, 2001
Campaign intensity index (N) Campaign expenditure (N) BES index of Labour contact (N)
Top targets
Secondary targets
Non-targeted ‘loseables’
145.8 (45) 91.3 (74) 0.445 (12)
140.5 (51) 87.0 (74) 0.344 (13)
120.4 (39) 78.4 (50) 0.186 (12)
Note: The figures shown are means. The differences between the two target groups on the one hand and the ‘loseables’ on the other are statistically significant (p ⬍ 0.05) in each case.
the campaign strategy was, therefore, largely defensive. For the purposes of comparison we have again divided the nationally-targeted seats into two groups on the basis of marginality. Since the party’s strategy was defensive, we use as a comparator group the 50 seats which, after the targets, were the most ’loseable’—i.e. had the smallest Labour majorities. The figures are shown in Table 3. As in 1997, the two categories of target seats have very similar scores but there is a significant decline for the comparator group of constituencies.3 The conclusion must be that again in 2001 national targeting clearly made a difference to the strength of campaigns in the constituencies. We can take this analysis a stage further. Our questionnaire surveys of election agents provide data about a wide range of campaigning activities and we can use these data to compare Labour campaigns in target and non-target constituencies in more detail. Table 4 presents evidence comparing 1997 campaigns in the two categories of target seats and non-target possibles. The first three rows of the table focus on campaign workers. It can be seen that during the campaign the comparator seats had, on average, only slightly fewer workers than the targets. The difference on polling day was rather larger, however, and in terms of volunteers moving between constituencies it is clear that target constituencies were much more likely to receive volunteers than to send them elsewhere, whereas the comparator group, overall, were slightly more likely to despatch workers to other constituencies than to receive them. The other data in Table 4 suggest that there was a clear difference in the style of campaigns mounted in target seats as compared with the ‘possibles’. We have argued elsewhere (see, for example, Denver et al., 2003) that the development of constituency campaigning in the 1990s involved not only increasing central direction of campaigns but also a move from traditional techniques to more modern methods of campaigning. Traditional techniques are those such as doorstep canvassing and leafleting, and in general they are more labour intensive; more modern approaches 3
We also calculated campaign strength figures for the next 50 most loseable seats and the 50 most marginal seats where Labour was in second place. In both cases, on all three measures campaigns were weaker than in the non-targeted loseables.
718
D. Denver, G. Hands / Electoral Studies 23 (2004) 709–726
Table 4 Labour campaigns in target and comparable non-target seats, 1997
Mean number of campaign workers Mean number of polling day workers Volunteer transfer index % did doorstep canvassing Mean % of electorate canvassed on doorstep Mean leaflets per elector delivered % delivered targeted leaflets Mean number of posters distributed Computers —% used computers —% used electronic electoral register —% used party software —% used computers to knock up Telephones —% did substantial tele-canvassing in pre-campaign period —% did substantial tele-canvassing during campaign —mean % of electorate canvassed by telephone —% did knocking up by telephone —% had tele-canvassing from outside the constituency Direct mail —% did substantial amount
Top targets
Secondary targets
Non-targeted possibles
81 288 +91 94 33.8 1.6 85 6101
80 212 +91 78 23.6 1.6 81 4524
76 183 ⫺3 100 37.3 1.7 80 4885
100 100 94 64
100 100 100 63
95 90 92 54
79
88
46
85
75
51
31.9 85
38.5 78
18.1 49
85
88
5
79
78
41
Note: With a few small variations, the Ns are 33 for top targets, 32 for secondary targets and 39 for nontargeted possibles.
take advantage of advances in information technology and involve, for example, the use of computers to compile canvass records and to produce knocking-up lists for the polling day mobilisation effort, telephone canvassing and knocking up, and direct mail. The data in Table 4 suggest that in 1997 there were relatively small differences between target seats and non-target possibles in their use of traditional techniques. Indeed, in some respects campaigns in non-target possibles were stronger on traditional techniques than those in targets. By contrast, target seats were clearly much more likely to use modern techniques—in some cases, such as making use of telephones and direct mail, by substantial margins. This tends to support the claim that central targeting was effective. It is not surprising that traditional campaigning should be reasonably strong in all of the seats analysed in the table—precisely because it is traditional. That is the way campaigning has always been done and party workers know how to do it without any prompting from the centre. On the other hand, the central party organisation specifically urged target seats to make use of newer campaign techniques and our data suggest that this was a successful initiative.
D. Denver, G. Hands / Electoral Studies 23 (2004) 709–726
719
Table 5 gives corresponding data for the 2001 election using the same comparison groups as in Table 3. Considerably fewer volunteer workers were involved on this occasion (possibly because the result of the election was widely seen as a foregone conclusion) and there appears to have been rather less transferring of workers into target seats. Even so, the targets had more workers and were more likely to receive them from elsewhere than comparable non-targets. In general, the non-targeted ‘loseables’ were less strong on traditional campaigning techniques than targets. In this case this is not surprising given that there were as many as 148 target seats and the non-targeted ‘loseables’ were the next group of seats beyond the targets. As in 1997, however, target constituencies were much more likely than the comparison group of non-targets to make use of modern techniques such as telephone canvassing and direct mail.
Table 5 Labour campaigns in target and comparable non-target seats, 2001
Mean number of campaign workers Mean number of polling day workers Volunteer transfer index % did doorstep canvassing Mean % of electorate canvassed on doorstep Mean leaflets per elector delivered % delivered targeted leaflets Mean number of posters distributed Computers —% used computers —% used electronic electoral register —% used party software —% used computers to knock up Telephones —% did substantial tele-canvassing in pre-campaign period —% did substantial tele-canvassing during campaign —mean % of electorate canvassed by telephone —% did knocking up by telephone —% had tele-canvassing from outside constituency before campaign —% had tele-canvassing from outside constituency during campaign Direct mail —% did a substantial amount
Top targets
Secondary targets
Non-targeted ‘loseables’
46 130 +54 96 28.1 1.3 91 3225
52 123 +25 92 29.6 1.4 78 2768
36 76 ⫺8 87 16.8 1.0 74 2093
100 96 100 69
100 90 98 78
100 87 80 72
76
63
23
60 23.0 89
59 26.8 84
28 13.8 54
82 93
67 57
23 13
76
59
44
Note: With some small variations, the Ns are 45 for top targets, 51 for secondary targets and 39 for nontargeted loseables.
720
D. Denver, G. Hands / Electoral Studies 23 (2004) 709–726
5. Is there a paradox to be explained? The evidence we have presented thus far clearly contradicts Seyd and Whiteley’s claim that Labour’s central targeting of key seats in 1997 did not make a difference to campaigning on the ground. While non-targeted possibles mounted quite strong traditional campaigns, modern campaigning techniques were much more in evidence in seats that were nationally targeted and Labour campaigning overall was clearly stronger in these constituencies. This leaves us, however, with the paradox referred to by Seyd and Whiteley. If stronger constituency campaigning is associated with better party performances, and if, as a result of efforts by the central campaign organisation, Labour constituency campaigns were strongest in the target seats, how then are we to explain the fact that Labour’s performance was apparently better in some of the non-targets than in the targets, or at least no better in targets than in ‘other types’ of seats? Seyd and Whiteley do not themselves undertake any analysis of Labour’s performance, relying instead on results derived from other sources. As noted above, they cite in particular Curtice and Steed’s conclusion that in 1997 Labour’s performance in target constituencies ‘was very similar to that in other Conservative/Labour contests’ (Curtice and Steed, 1997, p. 312). This conclusion—which has become a kind of orthodoxy about the 1997 election—is based on a single table in which the analysis is confined to 181 constituencies in which, on estimates of 1992 voting, the Conservatives were in first place and Labour in second. It compares the change in Labour’s share of the votes in targeted and non-targeted seats, giving figures separately for London, the rest of the South East and elsewhere. This appears to be a rather flimsy basis on which to draw the sweeping conclusion that Labour’s targeting had no impact. Changes in the level of party support are associated with a number of other variables, including region, the socio-economic character of constituencies, the tactical situation, and whether or not candidates are incumbent MPs. In order to form a more reliable judgement about how well or badly the parties performed in different categories of seats we need, therefore, to employ multivariate analysis taking account of such variables. In assessing whether Labour performed better in target seats than in others, two further issues have to be resolved. Firstly, it is not clear how change in Labour’s performance should be measured. The Livingstone Early Day Motion used swing figures but swing is a much less meaningful measure of electoral change in Britain than it used to be. It measures the relative performances of the Conservatives and Labour only and these two parties take the top two places in many fewer constituencies than formerly. Most commentators now focus on the changes in percentage vote shares for each of the parties individually (as Curtice and Steed do) but other measures of party performance that have been utilised include changes in the share of the electorate obtained, changes in the ratios of votes for different pairs of parties and percentage changes in the number of votes received. Secondly, as in making comparisons of campaign intensity, a decision has to be made about which constituencies to compare with targets in respect of electoral change. As we have already pointed out, the figures quoted in Livingstone’s Early Day Motion are highly selec-
D. Denver, G. Hands / Electoral Studies 23 (2004) 709–726
721
tive, comparing targets with a group of non-target seats which Labour happened to win, while other comparisons referred to by Seyd and Whiteley are rather vague. If we make a simple comparison in terms of change in Labour’s vote share between 1992 and 1997 in target and all non-target seats, then for the former the mean is +11.9% (N = 91) while for the remaining seats it is +9.2% (N = 548), and this is a statistically significant difference. Multivariate analysis is clearly more appropriate, however. A regression analysis predicting Labour’s vote share in 1997 on the basis of its 1992 share (which effectively takes account of a variety of socioeconomic variables associated with variations in the level of party support) together with dummy variables to control for region, personal incumbency and tactical situation, and an additional dummy variable indicating whether or not a constituency was a Labour target, confirms that targeting made a significant difference to Labour’s performance when compared with all other seats. The regression coefficient for the target dummy variable is +2.36.4 Clearly, then, results for Labour were better in targets than elsewhere if we analyse all seats together and we might conclude on this basis alone that there is no paradox to be explained. However, comparing Labour’s performance in target seats with all non-targets is not a very satisfactory test of the claim being made by Seyd and Whiteley, and neither is a comparison between target seats and all others in which Labour was lying second to the Conservatives (which also produces a significant regression coefficient for the target seats). Rather, we should compare Labour’s performance in targets with the seats we have labelled non-targeted possibles. In this case, a simple comparison of changes in party support does not suggest that targeting made any difference (see Table 6). On average, Labour’s vote share improved by slightly more Table 6 Changes in party shares of votes 1992–97 in target and comparable non-target seats
Mean change % Lab Mean change % Con Mean change % Lib Dem (N)
Targets %
Non-targetedpossibles %
+11.9 ⫺11.9 ⫺2.0 (91)
+12.3 ⫺11.9 ⫺3.1 (50)
Note: On the basis of ‘t’ tests, none of the differences shown is statistically significant.
4 The dependent variable is % Labour 1997 and the following predictor variables were entered using a stepwise procedure: % Labour 1992 (LAB92); dummy variables for each of 10 of the 11 standard regions; dummy variables indicating whether the Conservative, Labour or Liberal Democrat candidate was the incumbent MP (INC); a dummy variable indicating whether or not the Liberal Democrats came first or second in 1992 (LDDUM); and a final dummy variable differentiating Labour’s target and nontarget seats (LABTARG). The final equation is as follows: % Lab 97 = 13.06 + 0.906 (LAB92)⫺5.85 (LDDUM)⫺2.24 (Scotland)⫺2.51 (Wales) + 3.47 (London) + 2.36 (TARG) + 2.11 (South East) + 2.53 (North) + 1.62 (North West) + 0.952 (LABINC) Adjusted r 2 = 0.961.
722
D. Denver, G. Hands / Electoral Studies 23 (2004) 709–726
in the non-targeted possibles than in the targets and the Liberal Democrats declined by a little more, although the differences are not statistically significant. On this basis, it could obviously not be claimed that national targeting made a difference to electoral performance. What is needed, however, is a test based on multivariate analysis that enables us to compare Labour performance in the two sets of constituencies with one another. Such an analysis should not include campaigning as an independent variable, since our hypothesis is that it is campaigning that causes differences in performance between targets and non-targets. For the same reason, we should not use change in party support from 1992 as the dependent variable (or include performance in 1992 as a predictor variable) since variations in the level of Labour support across constituencies in 1992 would themselves have been influenced by variations in campaign strength (Denver and Hands, 1997, ch. 9). In constituencies in which there was strong campaigning in 1992 there would have been less scope for improving performance by campaigning strongly in 1997 than there would have been in other seats. We suggest, therefore, that to compare Labour’s performance in target and comparator seats we should use a multiple regression analysis to predict Labour’s share of the vote in 1997 and then compare the residual scores produced by the analysis for seats in the two categories.5 Better performances than predicted would be indicated by positive residual scores and worse performances by negative residuals. In order to obtain the best possible prediction we incorporated a large number of variables which are usually strongly correlated with party support into the analysis. We first analysed seats in which the Conservatives and Labour were in the first two places in 1992 (N = 410) so that all had a similar tactical situation, predicting Labour vote share in 1997 on the basis of the following independent variables: region (dummy variables for each of ten of the eleven standard regions); two dummy variable indicating whether the Conservative or Labour candidate was the incumbent MP; and eleven socio-demographic variables.6 The independent variables were entered using the stepwise regression procedure.7 A second analysis included all constituencies (N = 639) and sought to take account of variations in the tactical situation by the somewhat rough and ready method of including a dummy variable
5
Including separate dummy variables for target and comparator seats in the relevant regression equations would not be an appropriate strategy as this would show whether each group differed significantly from all other cases included in the analysis, rather than from each other. 6 These variables (all derived from the 1991 Census) and the abbreviations used to identify them are: number of electors per hectare (EPH), % residents with professional and managerial occupations (PMAN), % residents manual workers (MANW), % employed in agriculture (AG), % employed in manufacturing (MANU), % households owner occupiers (OO), % households council tenants (CT), % residents aged 18–29 (YOUNG), % residents of pensionable age (OLD), % households with no car (NOCAR), % ethnic minority residents (EM). 7 The final equation in this analysis is as follows: % Lab 97 = 6.58 + 0.284 (NOCAR) + 0.858 (MANW) + 3.05 (LABINC)⫺0.564 (OLD) + 7.57 (Wales) + 5.16 (North West) + 5.40 (North) + 2.48 (London)⫺1.27 (AG) + 0.141 (CT)⫺0.315 (MANU)⫺3.22 (South East) + 0.270 (PMAN) Adjusted r 2 = 0.792.
D. Denver, G. Hands / Electoral Studies 23 (2004) 709–726
723
indicating whether or not the Liberal Democrats filled one of the two top spots in 1992. A dummy variable for Liberal Democrat incumbency was also added.8 Table 7 shows the mean residual scores for target and comparator seats derived from the final equations. In Conservative⫺Labour contests (analysis A), Labour did better by about two percentage points in the nationally-targeted seats after other influences on vote share have been taken into account. This is not a large figure but it has never been claimed that constituency campaigning has a huge impact on election outcomes and the difference is statistically significant. When the analysis is extended to include all seats (analysis B) the difference between the two categories remains, but at around 1.5 percentage points just fails to achieve statistical significance at the 0.05 level. We conclude that there is reasonably strong evidence to suggest that in 1997 Labour did do better in nationally targeted seats⫺there is certainly no obvious paradox which requires explanation. We repeated these analyses for the 2001 election and the results are summarised in Table 8. In this case the ‘raw’ figures themselves show that Labour did significantly better in its targets, with the party’s mean share of votes hardly changing while it declined by more than two per cent in comparable seats. A regression analysis of seats where the Conservatives and Labour took the top two places in 1997 (N = 431, analysis A) with, as before, Labour’s vote share as the dependent variable, produced significantly different mean residual scores for Labour’s vote share for targets and the comparator group of seats.9 Extending the analysis to all cases (N = 638) and adding dummy variables for Liberal Democrat incumbency and situations in which the Liberal Democrats were in first or second place in 1997 (analysis B) Table 7 Residual scores when predicting Labour performance in 1997
Mean residual % Labour (A)—Con-Lab contests (N) Mean residual % Labour (B)—All contests (N)
Targets
Non-targeted possibles
+1.98 (84) +2.85 (91)
+0.06 (39) +1.31 (50)
Note: In analysis A, a ‘t’ test shows that the difference between targets and non-targets is statistically significant (p = 0.009). In analysis B the difference just fails to reach the 0.05 level of significance (p = 0.066). The constituencies of Tatton and West Bromwich West were excluded from the analyses.
8 The final equation in this case is as follows: % Lab 97 = 19.13⫺12.0 (LDDUM) + 0.474 (NOCAR) + 0.457 (MANW)⫺1.10 (AG)⫺0.855 (OLD) + 4.38 (LABINC)⫺7.92 (Scotland) + 5.56 (Wales)⫺7.11 (LDINC) + 3.30 (North West) + 3.48 (North) + 0.271 (CT)⫺0.251 (MANU) + 0.176 (OO)⫺4.04 (South West)⫺2.93 (South East)⫺0.07 (EPH) Adjusted r 2 = 0.879. 9 The relevant equation in this case is as follows: % Lab 2001 = 28.25 + 0.70 (NOCAR)⫺4.03 (CONINC)⫺0.352 (OLD) + 4.49 (LABINC) + 4.86 (North West) + 6.28 (North)⫺1.17 (AG)⫺3.81 (South East)⫺0.341 (MANU) + 0.579 (MANW) + 0.151 (EM) + 0.149 (CT) + 3.10 (Wales)⫺2.95 (E. Anglia) Adjusted r 2 = 0.853.
724
D. Denver, G. Hands / Electoral Studies 23 (2004) 709–726
Table 8 Party performance in 2001 in target and comparable non-target seats Targets
Non-targeted‘loseables’
Mean change % Lab Mean change % Con Mean change % Lib Dem (N)
⫺0.2 +0.1 +0.6 (147)
⫺2.2 ⫺0.4 +3.3 (50)
Mean residual % Lab (A) – Con-Lab contests (N)
⫺0.06 (142)
⫺2.14 (34)
Mean residual % Lab (B) – All contests (N)
+0.15 (147)
⫺2.03 (50)
Notes: On the basis of ‘t’ tests, the differences in the mean change in the Labour and Liberal Democrat shares of votes are statistically significant (p ⬍ 0.001). The differences in the mean residual scores are significant in both cases (p ⬍ 0.01). The constituencies of Glasgow Springburn, West Bromwich West and Wyre Forest were excluded from the analyses.
also resulted in significantly different residuals scores.10 In 2001, then, there is even more clearly no paradox relating to targeting, campaigning and party performance that requires explanation.
6. Conclusion We have argued that the evidence does not support Seyd and Whiteley’s claim that the targeting of constituency campaigning by the Labour Party in the 1997 general election was unsuccessful and ineffective. On the contrary, in terms both of the movement of volunteer campaign workers and of the overall intensity of campaigns, Labour’s success in concentrating efforts into key seats is clear. Our analysis also suggests that once relevant variables are taken into account Labour’s electoral performance was better in these key seats than in those not targeted. Moreover, both of these conclusions also apply in the 2001 general election. We have not attempted here to demonstrate that Labour’s better results in target seats resulted from stronger constituency campaigning. We have shown elsewhere, however, that there was a positive relationship between the strength of Labour campaigning and the party’s performance in constituencies in 1997 (Denver and Hands,
10 The final equation in this analysis is as follows: % Lab 2001 = 11.23 + 5.97 (LABINC) + 0.408 (NOCAR)⫺6.87 (LDDUM) + 0.405 (MANW)⫺0.902 (AG)⫺13.97 (LDINC)⫺0.755 (OLD)⫺4.64 (Scotland)⫺2.63 (CONINC)⫺0.194 (MANU) + 3.51 (Wales) + 3.08 (North West) + 3.54 (North) + 0.264 (CT) + 0.218 (OO) Adjusted r 2 = 0.894.
D. Denver, G. Hands / Electoral Studies 23 (2004) 709–726
725
1998) and this is common ground between ourselves and Seyd and Whiteley whose analysis in New Labour’s Grassroots reinforces the point. Nor would we want to deny Seyd and Whiteley’s more general argument about the importance of party members for the health of British political parties. Party members clearly perform a variety of important functions and campaigning in elections is only one of them. With reference to campaigning, however, it is worth noting that some of the modern techniques increasingly being adopted are less labour intensive than more traditional techniques and tend to reduce reliance on local volunteers on the ground. Computerisation may allow significant manpower savings; telephone canvassing is not only less labour intensive than knocking on doors but can be done by paid employees from telephone banks outside the constituency; direct mailing can be organised at national level by professionals. In this context, it may be noted that Labour’s performance in the 2001 general election was only marginally less good than in 1997, in spite of a decline of something like 40% in the work force that it was able to mobilise in key seats. Nonetheless, even given modern campaigning techniques, there are still tasks that demand dedicated local workers⫺filling envelopes, delivering leaflets, taking numbers at polling stations and so on. Given this, Seyd and Whiteley are right to argue that electoral problems are likely to ensue if party leaderships lose touch with their members.
Acknowledgements The material presented here is based on research projects supported by the ESRC (reference numbers R000222027 and R000239396). This support is gratefully acknowledged.
References Curtice, J., Steed, M., 1997. Appendix 2: The results analysed. In: Butler, D., Kavanagh, D. (Eds.), The British General Election of 1997. Macmillan, Basingstoke, pp. 295–325. Denver, D., Hands, G., 1997. Modern Constituency Campaigning. Frank Cass, London. Denver, D., Hands, G., 1997. Constituency campaigning in the 1997 General Election: Party effort and electoral effect. In: Crewe, I., Gosschalk, B., Bartle, J. (Eds.), Why Labour Won the General Election of 1997. Frank Cass, London, pp. 75–92. Denver, D., Hands, G., Henig, S., 1998. Triumph of targeting: Constituency campaigning in the 1997 election. British Elections and Parties Review 8, 171–190. Denver, D., Hands, G., Fisher, J., MacAllister, I., 2002. The impact of constituency campaigning in the 2001 General Election. British Elections and Parties Review 12, 80–94. Denver, D., Hands, G., Fisher, J., MacAllister, I., 2003. Constituency Campaigning in Britain, 1992-2001: Centralization and Modernization. Party Politics 9, 541–559. Labour Party, n.d. [1997] General Election Handbook. Pattie, C., Johnston, R., 2003. Local battles in a national landslide: constituency campaigning at the 2001 British General Election. Political Geography 22, 381–414. Rallings, C., Thrasher, M., 1995. Media Guide to the New Parliamentary Constituencies. Local Government Elections Centre, Plymouth. Seyd, P., Whiteley, P., 2002. New Labour’s Grass Roots. Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke.
726
D. Denver, G. Hands / Electoral Studies 23 (2004) 709–726
Whiteley, P., Seyd, P., 1998. Labour’s grassroots campaign. British Elections and Parties Review 8, 191–207. Whiteley, P., Seyd, P., 2002. Party election campaigning in Britain: The Labour Party. Paper presented at workshop on local campaigning, Canadian Political Science Association Congress, Toronto, May– June 2002. Whiteley, P., Seyd, P., 2003. How to win a landslide by really trying: the effects of local campaigning on voting in the 1997 British General Election. Electoral Studies 22, 301–324.
Labour’s targeted constituency campaigning: nationally directed or locally produced? David Denver ∗, Gordon Hands Department of Politics and International Relations, Lancaster University, Lancaster, LA1 4YL, UK
Abstract Along with a number of other researchers, Patrick Seyd and Paul Whiteley have consistently argued that constituency campaigning in Britain influences constituency election outcomes. In recent work, however, they have denied that the major efforts made by the Labour Party’s national headquarters to target resources and expertise into key seats in the 1997 general election was effective and that, as a consequence, the party had better results in these seats than elsewhere. Using various measures of campaign intensity, however, it is clear that target constituencies did have significantly stronger Labour campaigns than comparable constituencies that were not nationally targeted. Multivariate analysis also suggests that Labour’s performance in targeted seats was better than in comparable seats. 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Campaigning; Constituencies; Labour Party; Party members
1. Introduction Over the past 10 years or so, using different approaches and different types of data, a number of groups of researchers have argued that, contrary to the view which prevailed among British commentators throughout the post-war period, constituency campaigning in general elections has had a significant impact on constituency results. Patrick Seyd and Paul Whiteley are firmly in this revisionist camp and have based most of their analyses on a series of surveys of members of the major political parties. Their most recent contributions, for example, focus on the Labour Party and are based on a survey of party members conducted in 1997. Respondents were asked
∗
Corresponding author. Tel.: +44-152-459-4267; fax: +44-152-459-4238. E-mail address: [email protected] (D. Denver).
0261-3794/$ - see front matter 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.electstud.2003.10.005
710
D. Denver, G. Hands / Electoral Studies 23 (2004) 709–726
about their campaigning-related activities and Seyd and Whiteley use the relevant responses to construct an index of campaign activism for each constituency in their sample. They then show that there is a positive association between this index and Labour’s performance in the 1997 general election (Seyd and Whiteley, 2002; Whiteley and Seyd, 2003). Our own work on this issue has been largely based on post-election surveys of local party agents and other campaign organisers (see, for example, Denver and Hands, 1997; Denver et al., 2003). We have argued that during the 1990s relevant officials in the parties’ national organisations became more convinced than ever of the importance of constituency campaigning. As a result, they began to target expertise and other resources much more effectively than before on key seats—the relatively small number of constituencies that might change hands in an election and in which, consequently, the outcomes of general elections as a whole are decided. As it has come to be acknowledged that the quality of constituency campaigning makes a difference, there has been a tendency for the planning and management of constituency campaigns to come under the control of national party headquarters and national officials have been very active in seeking to improve the quality of campaigns mounted by local constituencies. Essentially, we have argued three propositions: 앫 the national organisations of the parties have sought to take greater control of campaigns in key constituencies and to incorporate them into their overall campaign strategies; 앫 as a consequence, resources of various kinds have been focused on nationallyidentified target seats and the campaigns in these seats have been stronger both than they otherwise would have been and than campaigns in non-targeted seats; and 앫 the parties’ electoral performance in constituencies has been significantly related to their local campaign effort—better campaigns produce better results. These propositions are best exemplified by the Labour Party and especially by Labour’s approach to the 1997 election. For that election, Labour developed a sophisticated and ambitious strategy for constituency campaigning (known as ‘Operation Victory’) which involved the ruthless targeting of resources upon 91 pre-selected target seats. All other seats—dubbed ‘majority seats’—were expected to run high profile but low-cost and low-resource campaigns. Party members in the majority seats were strongly encouraged to help the campaigns in nearby target seats. Labour won the election handsomely, of course, and within the party organisation Operation Victory was widely credited with making a major contribution to the party’s triumph (Denver and Hands, 1998; Denver et al., 1998). While Seyd and Whiteley have argued strongly in favour of the revisionist position on the question of the electoral impact of constituency campaigning, they have diverged quite sharply in one important respect from the line of argument which we have proposed. In New Labour’s Grassroots (Seyd and Whiteley, 2002) and elsewhere (Whiteley and Seyd, 1998, 2003) they acknowledge that in the 1997 general election Labour’s central organisation put a major effort into trying to strengthen
D. Denver, G. Hands / Electoral Studies 23 (2004) 709–726
711
campaigns in the target seats and, as already indicated, they reinforce their previous evidence about the impact of local campaigning. On the other hand, Seyd and Whiteley deny the second of the three propositions set out above, arguing that attempts by the central party to target campaigning resources and expertise into a limited number of key seats were actually unsuccessful. Variations in the strength of campaigns across constituencies, they contend, had nothing to do with the central targeting strategy but were produced by the varying assessments and actions of party members on the ground. It is on this specific contention—that the attempts of Labour’s central campaign organisation to build stronger campaigns in target constituencies were ineffective—that this article is focused. It is worth noting, however, that this contention becomes the basis for a wider argument in New Labour’s Grassroots about the role and significance of party members. Seyd and Whiteley warn that the magnitude of local campaign effects ‘suggests that parties which neglect and discourage their activists in the belief that they play only a ritualistic role in electioneering, are likely to pay a significant price in terms of seats lost in a general election’ (p. 136). In the concluding chapter of the book they go on to criticise the ‘New’ Labour leadership under Tony Blair for losing touch with the rank and file of the party and issue dire warnings, very much in an ‘Old’ Labour vein, about the policies being pursued by the government first elected in 1997.
2. Seyd and Whiteley’s argument in detail Seyd and Whiteley’s argument that Labour’s national targeting strategy was ineffective in 1997 is based on two main pieces of evidence. First, they present data from their survey of party members showing the extent to which members campaigned in seats other than their own. As part of Labour’s attempt to focus resources where they would make most difference, party members were urged by the central campaign organisation to do campaign work in the seats that had been identified as targets. Seyd and Whiteley asked their respondents whether they had been asked to work in another constituency, whether they had done so and, if so, how much time they had spent working in that constituency. In response, 28% said that they were asked to work in another constituency, and 9% said that they actually did so but only 3.5% said that they worked in another constituency for most or all of the time during the campaign. Seyd and Whiteley conclude from these figures that the national party’s targeting efforts were unsuccessful: ‘Despite the great emphasis placed on targeting by the party headquarters in Millbank, the strategy was not implemented effectively’ (2002, p. 120). As a second piece of evidence to support their argument, Seyd and Whiteley point out that despite all the extra effort and resources that were poured into its target seats by Labour in the 1997 election, Labour’s performance in these seats was similar to its performance in some groups of seats that were not targeted. In the earlier article in which they present the same line of argument they quote an Early Day Motion in the House of Commons, set down by Ken Livingstone and others shortly after the 1997 election, which drew attention to the fact that although the swing to
712
D. Denver, G. Hands / Electoral Studies 23 (2004) 709–726
Labour in the 91 target seats was 11.8%, the average for all seats was only a little smaller at 9.9%, and that ‘in the 54 non-target seats which were won by the Labour party without any centralised assistance from Millbank Tower [Labour’s national headquarters] the swing to Labour was 14.3 per cent’ (Whiteley and Seyd, 1998, p. 191). In New Labour’s Grassroots, Seyd and Whiteley are less precise, citing an elementary analysis by Curtice and Steed showing that there was little difference in Labour’s performance between targets and ‘other types’ of seats (pp. 113–115). The implication—which is spelled out by Seyd and Whiteley—is that targeting by the central party organisation made no difference to constituency outcomes. Seyd and Whiteley suggest that if national-level targeting was effective then the evidence relating to party performance gives rise to a paradox. If targeting worked as intended, and if (as they agree) better constituency campaigning results in a better performance, then how is the fact that Labour performed at least as well in a significant number of non-target seats as in its targets to be explained? Their answer to this conundrum is that there was indeed targeting and that targeting made a difference to results, but that ‘targeting was not in response to the directives from party headquarters. Rather it was organised by members themselves at the grassroots level’ (2002, p. 121). They go on to elaborate this point, suggesting that ‘Nationally directed and locally-directed campaigning are different things. In general, activists appear to make up their own minds about where to campaign, and they do so mostly in their own areas. There is a relationship between campaigning and marginality … but by and large this is because constituency parties in marginal seats are fairly active, not because of an influx of Labour activists from other constituencies’ (p. 121). In the remainder of this paper we investigate the claims made by Seyd and Whiteley, and contest the conclusions that they draw. We focus mainly on the 1997 election but, in addition, also provide evidence relating to the 2001 election when Labour once again mounted a highly-targeted campaign in accordance with a national strategy code-named ‘Operation Turnout’.
3. The movement of campaign workers into target seats First, we consider Seyd and Whiteley’s claim that their data on the extent to which party members campaigned in seats (presumably targets) other than their own show that the national party’s targeting strategy was not effective. The first point to note here is that Seyd and Whiteley appear to underestimate the significance of their own data. It is true that at first glance the percentages of members reporting having campaigned in other seats look rather small but this is misleading. The numbers of people represented by the percentage figures are actually very considerable. As we have seen, Seyd and Whiteley report that 3.5% of their respondents spent most or all of their time working in other seats. This, they tell us, is equivalent to 14,000 members (since the party had roughly 400,000 members in 1997). If all of these 14,000 were campaigning in one of the 91 Labour targets that would mean that there would have been, on average, 154 campaigners from elsewhere working
D. Denver, G. Hands / Electoral Studies 23 (2004) 709–726
713
most of the time in each target seat. The 9% of respondents who spent at least some of the time working in other seats would translate into 396 per target seat. By any reckoning these are very large numbers in the context of British constituency campaigns. Our own data, based on reports by local party agents immediately after the 1997 election, suggest that the mean number of campaign workers in Labour’s target seats on a typical day during the campaign was 81 (N = 65). No doubt the numbers involved over the three to four weeks of the campaign would have been larger, since different people would work on different days. Nonetheless, if a target seat received an influx of around 150 campaign workers from neighbouring constituencies, even some of the time during the campaign, then clearly that would represent a massive addition to the available workforce. To repeat the point: it may be that the percentage of party members who answered the call to campaign in target seats seems relatively small but in absolute terms the numbers are very large. Thus, Seyd and Whiteley appear to seriously underestimate the real-world significance of their own results since the impact on the ground of the numbers involved would have been huge. Our 1997 survey also provides some further evidence related to campaign workers transferring to target seats. We asked election agents whether volunteers were sent into their constituency from neighbouring seats on polling day and also whether they sent volunteers to neighbouring constituencies. This evidence relates only to transfers of workers on polling day and not earlier in the campaign. Further, our data will exclude people who worked in target seats rather than their own constituency without the knowledge of the relevant agents but will include volunteers who were not party members. In Table 1 we compare the figures for target seats with those for seats already held and not targeted and also for seats which were not held and not targeted. The results are very striking. Almost all campaigns in target seats reported receiving volunteers on polling day while there was hardly any movement from targets into non-targets. While these data tell us nothing about the numbers of volunteers involved, they nonetheless offer powerful initial evidence that in this respect Labour’s national targeting strategy was indeed effective on the ground. One final point about campaign workers needs to be made. It is undoubtedly the case that Labour headquarters attached considerable importance to getting volunteers to work in target seats. Thus, the introduction to the party’s 1997 General Election Table 1 Movement of polling day volunteers between target and non-target seats in 1997
% Received volunteers % Sent volunteers Volunteer transfer index (N)
Held not target %
Target %
Not held not target %
6 82 ⫺78 (168)
97 6 +91 (65)
8 65 ⫺57 (222)
Note: The ‘volunteer transfer index’ is the percentage of campaigns which received volunteer workers minus the percentage which sent volunteers elsewhere.
714
D. Denver, G. Hands / Electoral Studies 23 (2004) 709–726
Handbook states that ‘we want every single Labour party member to become involved in the campaign to win in the key seats (Labour Party, no date, p. 3), and elsewhere the Handbook stresses the need to run campaigns in non-target seats ‘with minimal numbers of volunteers’ (p. 31). It would surely not be suggested, however, that ensuring a large number of campaign workers was the only thing that mattered in mounting a strong campaign. Yet this is what seems to be implied by Seyd and Whiteley’s argument. If other aspects of campaigning are also important, as is surely the case, we cannot judge the success or otherwise of Labour’s targeting strategy simply on the basis of the movements of campaign workers between seats. A much wider range of evidence needs to be explored.
4. Did target constituencies have stronger campaigns? The central claim made by Seyd and Whiteley is that the attempts of Labour headquarters to focus resources on target constituencies did not work. We test this claim directly by comparing the strength or intensity of Labour campaigns in relevant constituencies using three different and independent measures of campaign strength. 앫 The first is an index of campaign intensity which we have developed in our studies of constituency campaigning in the last three general elections.1 The index is based on responses by constituency election agents/organisers to a range of questions about such things as campaign organisation, canvassing, use of computers and telephones, leafleting and polling day organisation, as well as the numbers of campaign workers. Scores on this index are available only for those campaigns which responded to our surveys, of course, but the response rate for Labour campaigns was 72% in 1997 and 69% in 2001. 앫 A second measure is based on campaign spending in the constituencies—specifically the amount that a party spent as a percentage of the maximum allowed. This has commonly been used as an indicator of the strength of campaigns (see, for example, Pattie and Johnston, 2003) and is, indeed, used by Seyd and Whiteley themselves in New Labour’s Grassroots (pp. 127–32). Clearly this is not a direct measure of campaign strength but it is a reasonable surrogate indicator. It has the advantages of being easily available and available for (virtually) all constituency campaigns and is, of course, completely independent of our survey-derived index of campaign strength. 앫 Finally we have derived a third measure, relating to the impact of campaigning upon individual electors, using data from the British Election Study (BES) surveys of 1997 and 2001. The 1997 BES survey included questions asking whether respondents had been canvassed, and by which party, and also whether they had been contacted by telephone. Following Whiteley and Seyd (2002), we computed
1 For details of the original index see Denver and Hands (1997, pp. 246–52). The index used here is an updated version, for which see Denver et al. (2002).
D. Denver, G. Hands / Electoral Studies 23 (2004) 709–726
715
for each respondent a simple additive index for Labour party contact, scoring 0 or 1 for each form of contact. This produces for each respondent a party contact index score ranging from 0 to 2. We then calculated the mean scores for Labour contacts in constituencies for which there were ten or more BES respondents. This index gives us a third, independent measure of campaigning strength although, given the sampling procedures of the BES, the number of constituencies for which it is available is very small. We have also constructed a similar index of Labour party contact in the 2001 election. Before we can compare constituencies in respect of these measures of campaign strength, however, there is a problem to be resolved. In order to assess the effectiveness of targeting we need to determine which seats the target constituencies are to be compared with. As we have seen, Seyd and Whiteley are rather vague on this point. On the one hand, they clearly want to argue that strong campaigns will be found in seats other than those on the party’s national target list—which suggests that we should compare those nationally targeted with some other group of seats. But which other group? It would not be helpful, we suggest, to compare targets with all other seats since the latter would include a large number of seats that were either very safe or hopeless for the party, and in those we would expect local campaigns to be particularly weak. For the same reason, it would not make sense to use either all of the non-target seats which Labour already held or all of the non-target seats the party did not hold as a comparator group. But to use the approach exemplified in the Early Day Motion referred to above also seems unsatisfactory, since that involved selecting a group of non-target seats in which Labour did very well and ‘selecting out’ seats of comparable safeness or marginality which Labour did not win. This suggests a solution, however, which is to compare the 1997 targets with the seats in which, on estimates of the 1992 result,2 Labour was closest to the winning party but which were not on the party’s target list whether, in the event, these were won or not. We might call these ‘non-targeted possibles’. On the other hand, as we have seen Seyd and Whiteley claim that ‘targeting was … organised by the members themselves at the grassroots level’ and go on to acknowledge that ‘there is a relationship between campaigning and marginality’ (2002, p. 121). The problem here is that if local targeting was in response to activists’ assessments of constituency marginality, then local targets and national targets would be likely to overlap very substantially—the only exceptions would probably be seats where activists had local knowledge or concerns, for example about particular candidates or the tactical situation in three-cornered fights. So how can we test Seyd and Whiteley’s claim? We may be able to do so if we differentiate within the (national) target seats between those which were more and those which were less marginal. If the strength of campaigning in constituencies is determined by local activists’ assess2 There was a major redrawing of constituency boundaries between 1992 and 1997 so that all analyses of changes in party performances are based on the widely-used estimates provided by Rallings and Thrasher (1995) of what the vote distributions in the constituencies would have been in 1992 had the 1997 boundaries been in operation.
716
D. Denver, G. Hands / Electoral Studies 23 (2004) 709–726
ments of constituency marginality, then we might expect to find the strongest campaigns in the more marginal targets, rather less strong campaigns in the less marginal targets, and still weaker campaigns in the ‘non-targeted possibles’. By contrast, if our claim that national targeting is the crucial determinant of campaign strength is correct, then we would expect to find relatively little difference between the two categories of targets, but clearly weaker campaigns in the non-targeted possibles. For the 1997 election, then, we focus on three groups of seats: ‘top targets’, ‘secondary targets’ and ‘non-targeted possibles’. We take the 45 target seats which needed the smallest swings to be won as the top targets, the remaining 46 as secondary targets and the next 50 seats in terms of winnability as non-targeted possibles. In addition, since activists might have ‘locally’ targeted seats which were narrowly held by Labour, we also provide data for the fifty most marginal Labour-held seats not on the national target list. Table 2 shows mean scores on the three measures of campaign intensity for all four groups of seats. It can be seen that in each case scores for the two types of targets are very similar but there is a clear decline between secondary targets and non-targeted possibles. Campaigns in Labour-held marginals were also clearly weaker than those in the nationally targeted seats. The evidence indicates, then, that contrary to Seyd and Whiteley’s argument the national targeting strategy did result in more intense campaigns in the nationally-targeted seats than in other comparable seats, and there is also no evidence of a gradual decline in campaign strength across targets and non-targeted possibles. Although Seyd and Whiteley have not yet reported results for the 2001 general election, we have replicated our analysis of campaign intensity for that election. In this case, Labour had many more target seats (148)—now renamed ‘priority seats’— all but two of which had been gained in 1997. The party already had a huge majority in Parliament and could hardly expect to gain very many (if any) more seats and Table 2 Labour campaign intensity in target and comparable non-target seats, 1997
Campaign intensity index (N) Campaign expenditure (N) BES index of Labour contact (N)
Top targets
Secondary targets
Non-targeted possibles
Labour-held marginals
153.0
151.7
132.1
126.1
(33) 92.9 (45) 0.403
(32) 93.1 (46) 0.484
(39) 88.8 (50) 0.210
(34) 84.3 (50) 0.306
(6)
(12)
(8)
(13)
Note: The figures shown are means. In this and Table 3 the significance of the differences between means is tested using the ANOVA procedure. Here, the two target categories differ significantly (p ⬍ 0.05) from the other two in respect of campaign intensity and Labour-held marginals are significantly different from the other three groups in respect of expenditure. Given the small numbers involved, it is no surprise that the differences in the index of contact are not statistically significant.
D. Denver, G. Hands / Electoral Studies 23 (2004) 709–726
717
Table 3 Labour campaign intensity in target and comparable non-target seats, 2001
Campaign intensity index (N) Campaign expenditure (N) BES index of Labour contact (N)
Top targets
Secondary targets
Non-targeted ‘loseables’
145.8 (45) 91.3 (74) 0.445 (12)
140.5 (51) 87.0 (74) 0.344 (13)
120.4 (39) 78.4 (50) 0.186 (12)
Note: The figures shown are means. The differences between the two target groups on the one hand and the ‘loseables’ on the other are statistically significant (p ⬍ 0.05) in each case.
the campaign strategy was, therefore, largely defensive. For the purposes of comparison we have again divided the nationally-targeted seats into two groups on the basis of marginality. Since the party’s strategy was defensive, we use as a comparator group the 50 seats which, after the targets, were the most ’loseable’—i.e. had the smallest Labour majorities. The figures are shown in Table 3. As in 1997, the two categories of target seats have very similar scores but there is a significant decline for the comparator group of constituencies.3 The conclusion must be that again in 2001 national targeting clearly made a difference to the strength of campaigns in the constituencies. We can take this analysis a stage further. Our questionnaire surveys of election agents provide data about a wide range of campaigning activities and we can use these data to compare Labour campaigns in target and non-target constituencies in more detail. Table 4 presents evidence comparing 1997 campaigns in the two categories of target seats and non-target possibles. The first three rows of the table focus on campaign workers. It can be seen that during the campaign the comparator seats had, on average, only slightly fewer workers than the targets. The difference on polling day was rather larger, however, and in terms of volunteers moving between constituencies it is clear that target constituencies were much more likely to receive volunteers than to send them elsewhere, whereas the comparator group, overall, were slightly more likely to despatch workers to other constituencies than to receive them. The other data in Table 4 suggest that there was a clear difference in the style of campaigns mounted in target seats as compared with the ‘possibles’. We have argued elsewhere (see, for example, Denver et al., 2003) that the development of constituency campaigning in the 1990s involved not only increasing central direction of campaigns but also a move from traditional techniques to more modern methods of campaigning. Traditional techniques are those such as doorstep canvassing and leafleting, and in general they are more labour intensive; more modern approaches 3
We also calculated campaign strength figures for the next 50 most loseable seats and the 50 most marginal seats where Labour was in second place. In both cases, on all three measures campaigns were weaker than in the non-targeted loseables.
718
D. Denver, G. Hands / Electoral Studies 23 (2004) 709–726
Table 4 Labour campaigns in target and comparable non-target seats, 1997
Mean number of campaign workers Mean number of polling day workers Volunteer transfer index % did doorstep canvassing Mean % of electorate canvassed on doorstep Mean leaflets per elector delivered % delivered targeted leaflets Mean number of posters distributed Computers —% used computers —% used electronic electoral register —% used party software —% used computers to knock up Telephones —% did substantial tele-canvassing in pre-campaign period —% did substantial tele-canvassing during campaign —mean % of electorate canvassed by telephone —% did knocking up by telephone —% had tele-canvassing from outside the constituency Direct mail —% did substantial amount
Top targets
Secondary targets
Non-targeted possibles
81 288 +91 94 33.8 1.6 85 6101
80 212 +91 78 23.6 1.6 81 4524
76 183 ⫺3 100 37.3 1.7 80 4885
100 100 94 64
100 100 100 63
95 90 92 54
79
88
46
85
75
51
31.9 85
38.5 78
18.1 49
85
88
5
79
78
41
Note: With a few small variations, the Ns are 33 for top targets, 32 for secondary targets and 39 for nontargeted possibles.
take advantage of advances in information technology and involve, for example, the use of computers to compile canvass records and to produce knocking-up lists for the polling day mobilisation effort, telephone canvassing and knocking up, and direct mail. The data in Table 4 suggest that in 1997 there were relatively small differences between target seats and non-target possibles in their use of traditional techniques. Indeed, in some respects campaigns in non-target possibles were stronger on traditional techniques than those in targets. By contrast, target seats were clearly much more likely to use modern techniques—in some cases, such as making use of telephones and direct mail, by substantial margins. This tends to support the claim that central targeting was effective. It is not surprising that traditional campaigning should be reasonably strong in all of the seats analysed in the table—precisely because it is traditional. That is the way campaigning has always been done and party workers know how to do it without any prompting from the centre. On the other hand, the central party organisation specifically urged target seats to make use of newer campaign techniques and our data suggest that this was a successful initiative.
D. Denver, G. Hands / Electoral Studies 23 (2004) 709–726
719
Table 5 gives corresponding data for the 2001 election using the same comparison groups as in Table 3. Considerably fewer volunteer workers were involved on this occasion (possibly because the result of the election was widely seen as a foregone conclusion) and there appears to have been rather less transferring of workers into target seats. Even so, the targets had more workers and were more likely to receive them from elsewhere than comparable non-targets. In general, the non-targeted ‘loseables’ were less strong on traditional campaigning techniques than targets. In this case this is not surprising given that there were as many as 148 target seats and the non-targeted ‘loseables’ were the next group of seats beyond the targets. As in 1997, however, target constituencies were much more likely than the comparison group of non-targets to make use of modern techniques such as telephone canvassing and direct mail.
Table 5 Labour campaigns in target and comparable non-target seats, 2001
Mean number of campaign workers Mean number of polling day workers Volunteer transfer index % did doorstep canvassing Mean % of electorate canvassed on doorstep Mean leaflets per elector delivered % delivered targeted leaflets Mean number of posters distributed Computers —% used computers —% used electronic electoral register —% used party software —% used computers to knock up Telephones —% did substantial tele-canvassing in pre-campaign period —% did substantial tele-canvassing during campaign —mean % of electorate canvassed by telephone —% did knocking up by telephone —% had tele-canvassing from outside constituency before campaign —% had tele-canvassing from outside constituency during campaign Direct mail —% did a substantial amount
Top targets
Secondary targets
Non-targeted ‘loseables’
46 130 +54 96 28.1 1.3 91 3225
52 123 +25 92 29.6 1.4 78 2768
36 76 ⫺8 87 16.8 1.0 74 2093
100 96 100 69
100 90 98 78
100 87 80 72
76
63
23
60 23.0 89
59 26.8 84
28 13.8 54
82 93
67 57
23 13
76
59
44
Note: With some small variations, the Ns are 45 for top targets, 51 for secondary targets and 39 for nontargeted loseables.
720
D. Denver, G. Hands / Electoral Studies 23 (2004) 709–726
5. Is there a paradox to be explained? The evidence we have presented thus far clearly contradicts Seyd and Whiteley’s claim that Labour’s central targeting of key seats in 1997 did not make a difference to campaigning on the ground. While non-targeted possibles mounted quite strong traditional campaigns, modern campaigning techniques were much more in evidence in seats that were nationally targeted and Labour campaigning overall was clearly stronger in these constituencies. This leaves us, however, with the paradox referred to by Seyd and Whiteley. If stronger constituency campaigning is associated with better party performances, and if, as a result of efforts by the central campaign organisation, Labour constituency campaigns were strongest in the target seats, how then are we to explain the fact that Labour’s performance was apparently better in some of the non-targets than in the targets, or at least no better in targets than in ‘other types’ of seats? Seyd and Whiteley do not themselves undertake any analysis of Labour’s performance, relying instead on results derived from other sources. As noted above, they cite in particular Curtice and Steed’s conclusion that in 1997 Labour’s performance in target constituencies ‘was very similar to that in other Conservative/Labour contests’ (Curtice and Steed, 1997, p. 312). This conclusion—which has become a kind of orthodoxy about the 1997 election—is based on a single table in which the analysis is confined to 181 constituencies in which, on estimates of 1992 voting, the Conservatives were in first place and Labour in second. It compares the change in Labour’s share of the votes in targeted and non-targeted seats, giving figures separately for London, the rest of the South East and elsewhere. This appears to be a rather flimsy basis on which to draw the sweeping conclusion that Labour’s targeting had no impact. Changes in the level of party support are associated with a number of other variables, including region, the socio-economic character of constituencies, the tactical situation, and whether or not candidates are incumbent MPs. In order to form a more reliable judgement about how well or badly the parties performed in different categories of seats we need, therefore, to employ multivariate analysis taking account of such variables. In assessing whether Labour performed better in target seats than in others, two further issues have to be resolved. Firstly, it is not clear how change in Labour’s performance should be measured. The Livingstone Early Day Motion used swing figures but swing is a much less meaningful measure of electoral change in Britain than it used to be. It measures the relative performances of the Conservatives and Labour only and these two parties take the top two places in many fewer constituencies than formerly. Most commentators now focus on the changes in percentage vote shares for each of the parties individually (as Curtice and Steed do) but other measures of party performance that have been utilised include changes in the share of the electorate obtained, changes in the ratios of votes for different pairs of parties and percentage changes in the number of votes received. Secondly, as in making comparisons of campaign intensity, a decision has to be made about which constituencies to compare with targets in respect of electoral change. As we have already pointed out, the figures quoted in Livingstone’s Early Day Motion are highly selec-
D. Denver, G. Hands / Electoral Studies 23 (2004) 709–726
721
tive, comparing targets with a group of non-target seats which Labour happened to win, while other comparisons referred to by Seyd and Whiteley are rather vague. If we make a simple comparison in terms of change in Labour’s vote share between 1992 and 1997 in target and all non-target seats, then for the former the mean is +11.9% (N = 91) while for the remaining seats it is +9.2% (N = 548), and this is a statistically significant difference. Multivariate analysis is clearly more appropriate, however. A regression analysis predicting Labour’s vote share in 1997 on the basis of its 1992 share (which effectively takes account of a variety of socioeconomic variables associated with variations in the level of party support) together with dummy variables to control for region, personal incumbency and tactical situation, and an additional dummy variable indicating whether or not a constituency was a Labour target, confirms that targeting made a significant difference to Labour’s performance when compared with all other seats. The regression coefficient for the target dummy variable is +2.36.4 Clearly, then, results for Labour were better in targets than elsewhere if we analyse all seats together and we might conclude on this basis alone that there is no paradox to be explained. However, comparing Labour’s performance in target seats with all non-targets is not a very satisfactory test of the claim being made by Seyd and Whiteley, and neither is a comparison between target seats and all others in which Labour was lying second to the Conservatives (which also produces a significant regression coefficient for the target seats). Rather, we should compare Labour’s performance in targets with the seats we have labelled non-targeted possibles. In this case, a simple comparison of changes in party support does not suggest that targeting made any difference (see Table 6). On average, Labour’s vote share improved by slightly more Table 6 Changes in party shares of votes 1992–97 in target and comparable non-target seats
Mean change % Lab Mean change % Con Mean change % Lib Dem (N)
Targets %
Non-targetedpossibles %
+11.9 ⫺11.9 ⫺2.0 (91)
+12.3 ⫺11.9 ⫺3.1 (50)
Note: On the basis of ‘t’ tests, none of the differences shown is statistically significant.
4 The dependent variable is % Labour 1997 and the following predictor variables were entered using a stepwise procedure: % Labour 1992 (LAB92); dummy variables for each of 10 of the 11 standard regions; dummy variables indicating whether the Conservative, Labour or Liberal Democrat candidate was the incumbent MP (INC); a dummy variable indicating whether or not the Liberal Democrats came first or second in 1992 (LDDUM); and a final dummy variable differentiating Labour’s target and nontarget seats (LABTARG). The final equation is as follows: % Lab 97 = 13.06 + 0.906 (LAB92)⫺5.85 (LDDUM)⫺2.24 (Scotland)⫺2.51 (Wales) + 3.47 (London) + 2.36 (TARG) + 2.11 (South East) + 2.53 (North) + 1.62 (North West) + 0.952 (LABINC) Adjusted r 2 = 0.961.
722
D. Denver, G. Hands / Electoral Studies 23 (2004) 709–726
in the non-targeted possibles than in the targets and the Liberal Democrats declined by a little more, although the differences are not statistically significant. On this basis, it could obviously not be claimed that national targeting made a difference to electoral performance. What is needed, however, is a test based on multivariate analysis that enables us to compare Labour performance in the two sets of constituencies with one another. Such an analysis should not include campaigning as an independent variable, since our hypothesis is that it is campaigning that causes differences in performance between targets and non-targets. For the same reason, we should not use change in party support from 1992 as the dependent variable (or include performance in 1992 as a predictor variable) since variations in the level of Labour support across constituencies in 1992 would themselves have been influenced by variations in campaign strength (Denver and Hands, 1997, ch. 9). In constituencies in which there was strong campaigning in 1992 there would have been less scope for improving performance by campaigning strongly in 1997 than there would have been in other seats. We suggest, therefore, that to compare Labour’s performance in target and comparator seats we should use a multiple regression analysis to predict Labour’s share of the vote in 1997 and then compare the residual scores produced by the analysis for seats in the two categories.5 Better performances than predicted would be indicated by positive residual scores and worse performances by negative residuals. In order to obtain the best possible prediction we incorporated a large number of variables which are usually strongly correlated with party support into the analysis. We first analysed seats in which the Conservatives and Labour were in the first two places in 1992 (N = 410) so that all had a similar tactical situation, predicting Labour vote share in 1997 on the basis of the following independent variables: region (dummy variables for each of ten of the eleven standard regions); two dummy variable indicating whether the Conservative or Labour candidate was the incumbent MP; and eleven socio-demographic variables.6 The independent variables were entered using the stepwise regression procedure.7 A second analysis included all constituencies (N = 639) and sought to take account of variations in the tactical situation by the somewhat rough and ready method of including a dummy variable
5
Including separate dummy variables for target and comparator seats in the relevant regression equations would not be an appropriate strategy as this would show whether each group differed significantly from all other cases included in the analysis, rather than from each other. 6 These variables (all derived from the 1991 Census) and the abbreviations used to identify them are: number of electors per hectare (EPH), % residents with professional and managerial occupations (PMAN), % residents manual workers (MANW), % employed in agriculture (AG), % employed in manufacturing (MANU), % households owner occupiers (OO), % households council tenants (CT), % residents aged 18–29 (YOUNG), % residents of pensionable age (OLD), % households with no car (NOCAR), % ethnic minority residents (EM). 7 The final equation in this analysis is as follows: % Lab 97 = 6.58 + 0.284 (NOCAR) + 0.858 (MANW) + 3.05 (LABINC)⫺0.564 (OLD) + 7.57 (Wales) + 5.16 (North West) + 5.40 (North) + 2.48 (London)⫺1.27 (AG) + 0.141 (CT)⫺0.315 (MANU)⫺3.22 (South East) + 0.270 (PMAN) Adjusted r 2 = 0.792.
D. Denver, G. Hands / Electoral Studies 23 (2004) 709–726
723
indicating whether or not the Liberal Democrats filled one of the two top spots in 1992. A dummy variable for Liberal Democrat incumbency was also added.8 Table 7 shows the mean residual scores for target and comparator seats derived from the final equations. In Conservative⫺Labour contests (analysis A), Labour did better by about two percentage points in the nationally-targeted seats after other influences on vote share have been taken into account. This is not a large figure but it has never been claimed that constituency campaigning has a huge impact on election outcomes and the difference is statistically significant. When the analysis is extended to include all seats (analysis B) the difference between the two categories remains, but at around 1.5 percentage points just fails to achieve statistical significance at the 0.05 level. We conclude that there is reasonably strong evidence to suggest that in 1997 Labour did do better in nationally targeted seats⫺there is certainly no obvious paradox which requires explanation. We repeated these analyses for the 2001 election and the results are summarised in Table 8. In this case the ‘raw’ figures themselves show that Labour did significantly better in its targets, with the party’s mean share of votes hardly changing while it declined by more than two per cent in comparable seats. A regression analysis of seats where the Conservatives and Labour took the top two places in 1997 (N = 431, analysis A) with, as before, Labour’s vote share as the dependent variable, produced significantly different mean residual scores for Labour’s vote share for targets and the comparator group of seats.9 Extending the analysis to all cases (N = 638) and adding dummy variables for Liberal Democrat incumbency and situations in which the Liberal Democrats were in first or second place in 1997 (analysis B) Table 7 Residual scores when predicting Labour performance in 1997
Mean residual % Labour (A)—Con-Lab contests (N) Mean residual % Labour (B)—All contests (N)
Targets
Non-targeted possibles
+1.98 (84) +2.85 (91)
+0.06 (39) +1.31 (50)
Note: In analysis A, a ‘t’ test shows that the difference between targets and non-targets is statistically significant (p = 0.009). In analysis B the difference just fails to reach the 0.05 level of significance (p = 0.066). The constituencies of Tatton and West Bromwich West were excluded from the analyses.
8 The final equation in this case is as follows: % Lab 97 = 19.13⫺12.0 (LDDUM) + 0.474 (NOCAR) + 0.457 (MANW)⫺1.10 (AG)⫺0.855 (OLD) + 4.38 (LABINC)⫺7.92 (Scotland) + 5.56 (Wales)⫺7.11 (LDINC) + 3.30 (North West) + 3.48 (North) + 0.271 (CT)⫺0.251 (MANU) + 0.176 (OO)⫺4.04 (South West)⫺2.93 (South East)⫺0.07 (EPH) Adjusted r 2 = 0.879. 9 The relevant equation in this case is as follows: % Lab 2001 = 28.25 + 0.70 (NOCAR)⫺4.03 (CONINC)⫺0.352 (OLD) + 4.49 (LABINC) + 4.86 (North West) + 6.28 (North)⫺1.17 (AG)⫺3.81 (South East)⫺0.341 (MANU) + 0.579 (MANW) + 0.151 (EM) + 0.149 (CT) + 3.10 (Wales)⫺2.95 (E. Anglia) Adjusted r 2 = 0.853.
724
D. Denver, G. Hands / Electoral Studies 23 (2004) 709–726
Table 8 Party performance in 2001 in target and comparable non-target seats Targets
Non-targeted‘loseables’
Mean change % Lab Mean change % Con Mean change % Lib Dem (N)
⫺0.2 +0.1 +0.6 (147)
⫺2.2 ⫺0.4 +3.3 (50)
Mean residual % Lab (A) – Con-Lab contests (N)
⫺0.06 (142)
⫺2.14 (34)
Mean residual % Lab (B) – All contests (N)
+0.15 (147)
⫺2.03 (50)
Notes: On the basis of ‘t’ tests, the differences in the mean change in the Labour and Liberal Democrat shares of votes are statistically significant (p ⬍ 0.001). The differences in the mean residual scores are significant in both cases (p ⬍ 0.01). The constituencies of Glasgow Springburn, West Bromwich West and Wyre Forest were excluded from the analyses.
also resulted in significantly different residuals scores.10 In 2001, then, there is even more clearly no paradox relating to targeting, campaigning and party performance that requires explanation.
6. Conclusion We have argued that the evidence does not support Seyd and Whiteley’s claim that the targeting of constituency campaigning by the Labour Party in the 1997 general election was unsuccessful and ineffective. On the contrary, in terms both of the movement of volunteer campaign workers and of the overall intensity of campaigns, Labour’s success in concentrating efforts into key seats is clear. Our analysis also suggests that once relevant variables are taken into account Labour’s electoral performance was better in these key seats than in those not targeted. Moreover, both of these conclusions also apply in the 2001 general election. We have not attempted here to demonstrate that Labour’s better results in target seats resulted from stronger constituency campaigning. We have shown elsewhere, however, that there was a positive relationship between the strength of Labour campaigning and the party’s performance in constituencies in 1997 (Denver and Hands,
10 The final equation in this analysis is as follows: % Lab 2001 = 11.23 + 5.97 (LABINC) + 0.408 (NOCAR)⫺6.87 (LDDUM) + 0.405 (MANW)⫺0.902 (AG)⫺13.97 (LDINC)⫺0.755 (OLD)⫺4.64 (Scotland)⫺2.63 (CONINC)⫺0.194 (MANU) + 3.51 (Wales) + 3.08 (North West) + 3.54 (North) + 0.264 (CT) + 0.218 (OO) Adjusted r 2 = 0.894.
D. Denver, G. Hands / Electoral Studies 23 (2004) 709–726
725
1998) and this is common ground between ourselves and Seyd and Whiteley whose analysis in New Labour’s Grassroots reinforces the point. Nor would we want to deny Seyd and Whiteley’s more general argument about the importance of party members for the health of British political parties. Party members clearly perform a variety of important functions and campaigning in elections is only one of them. With reference to campaigning, however, it is worth noting that some of the modern techniques increasingly being adopted are less labour intensive than more traditional techniques and tend to reduce reliance on local volunteers on the ground. Computerisation may allow significant manpower savings; telephone canvassing is not only less labour intensive than knocking on doors but can be done by paid employees from telephone banks outside the constituency; direct mailing can be organised at national level by professionals. In this context, it may be noted that Labour’s performance in the 2001 general election was only marginally less good than in 1997, in spite of a decline of something like 40% in the work force that it was able to mobilise in key seats. Nonetheless, even given modern campaigning techniques, there are still tasks that demand dedicated local workers⫺filling envelopes, delivering leaflets, taking numbers at polling stations and so on. Given this, Seyd and Whiteley are right to argue that electoral problems are likely to ensue if party leaderships lose touch with their members.
Acknowledgements The material presented here is based on research projects supported by the ESRC (reference numbers R000222027 and R000239396). This support is gratefully acknowledged.
References Curtice, J., Steed, M., 1997. Appendix 2: The results analysed. In: Butler, D., Kavanagh, D. (Eds.), The British General Election of 1997. Macmillan, Basingstoke, pp. 295–325. Denver, D., Hands, G., 1997. Modern Constituency Campaigning. Frank Cass, London. Denver, D., Hands, G., 1997. Constituency campaigning in the 1997 General Election: Party effort and electoral effect. In: Crewe, I., Gosschalk, B., Bartle, J. (Eds.), Why Labour Won the General Election of 1997. Frank Cass, London, pp. 75–92. Denver, D., Hands, G., Henig, S., 1998. Triumph of targeting: Constituency campaigning in the 1997 election. British Elections and Parties Review 8, 171–190. Denver, D., Hands, G., Fisher, J., MacAllister, I., 2002. The impact of constituency campaigning in the 2001 General Election. British Elections and Parties Review 12, 80–94. Denver, D., Hands, G., Fisher, J., MacAllister, I., 2003. Constituency Campaigning in Britain, 1992-2001: Centralization and Modernization. Party Politics 9, 541–559. Labour Party, n.d. [1997] General Election Handbook. Pattie, C., Johnston, R., 2003. Local battles in a national landslide: constituency campaigning at the 2001 British General Election. Political Geography 22, 381–414. Rallings, C., Thrasher, M., 1995. Media Guide to the New Parliamentary Constituencies. Local Government Elections Centre, Plymouth. Seyd, P., Whiteley, P., 2002. New Labour’s Grass Roots. Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke.
726
D. Denver, G. Hands / Electoral Studies 23 (2004) 709–726
Whiteley, P., Seyd, P., 1998. Labour’s grassroots campaign. British Elections and Parties Review 8, 191–207. Whiteley, P., Seyd, P., 2002. Party election campaigning in Britain: The Labour Party. Paper presented at workshop on local campaigning, Canadian Political Science Association Congress, Toronto, May– June 2002. Whiteley, P., Seyd, P., 2003. How to win a landslide by really trying: the effects of local campaigning on voting in the 1997 British General Election. Electoral Studies 22, 301–324.