Modern Constituency Electioneering: Local Campaigning in the 1992 General Election

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

David Denver is Reader in Politics at Lancaster University Gordon Hands is Senior Lecturer in Politics at Lancaster University