Do party leaflets and canvass visits increase voter turnout?

Experiments in the US consistently find that Get Out The Vote campaigns boost participation at election time. Is the same true for Britain? Using a field experiment carried out in cooperation with the Liberal Democrats in May 2017, Joshua Townsley finds that leaflets and canvass visits did boost turnout, but that postal voters were unaffected by campaign contact

Do Traditional Party Campaigns Matter Anymore? Experimental and Survey Evidence from Britain

'If you believe in something, write it on a piece of paper and stick it through a letterbox' This quote, attributed to former Member of Parliament David Penhaligon (1944-1986), epitomises traditional electioneering in Britain. But local campaigns that had long been characterised by labour-intensive activities such as canvass visits and leaflets are changing. Dwindling numbers of local activists means that parties are struggling to maintain widespread contact with voters through such labour-intensive means. While developments in communication technology have introduced new, digital forms of campaigning, traditional activities remain resilient. It is against this backdrop that the motivation behind this thesis is presented - should traditional campaigning be allowed to whither? I explore the role and impact of campaigning in Britain today, focusing on the most common modes - leaflets and canvass visits. First, I examine the role these activities play when it comes to increasing participation at election time. I make an empirical contribution to a largely US-based, non-partisan Get Out The Vote (GOTV) literature by conducting new voter mobilisation field experiments in the May 2017 round of English local elections. The study represents one of the few partisan GOTV experiments to be carried out in Britain, and the first individual-level experiment anywhere to include postal voters. Embedded in a real party campaign, the experiments show that leaflets, and a combination of canvass visits and leaflets, both have positive effects on voter turnout at a local election. Meanwhile, there is evidence of a mobilisation 'ceiling effect' among higher turnout postal voters. I then use the marked electoral registers from the subsequent general election to examine the downstream effects the treatments had on turnout. I find that the effects of campaign contact detected in the May local election were quickly subsumed at the general election in June, when underlying turnout rose substantially. Together, the experiment and the downstream analysis provide new empirical evidence that traditional campaigns mobilise voters at lower saliency elections. Finally, I investigate the role that voters' preferences for different types of campaign contact play in conditioning campaign effects. While research into campaign activities is extensive, this represents the first attempt to examine voters' preferences when it comes to how they are contacted. Using survey data of voters in Wales, I show that there is considerable heterogeneity in preferences, driven largely by levels of political interest and previous exposure to different activities. I also find evidence that wanting to be contacted conditions campaign effects, contributing to ongoing debates about which voters are most influenced by campaigns. Overall, I provide evidence that while under threat, traditional party campaign activities still play a vital role in increasing turnout at lower saliency elections - though the temporal durability of effects are susceptible to being consumed at subsequent higher turnout elections. Given that low turnout elections are becoming increasingly common in Britain, however, I argue that the importance of traditional campaign activities is unlikely to diminish for some time to come

England’s local elections 2018: bridging the information gap with the Democratic Dashboard

On 3 May, voters across England have the chance to vote in elections to their local councils. The Democratic Dashboard is Democratic Audit’s voter resource, which brings together an array of information on the local elections taking place. Our aim is to simplify the complicated world of local elections in the UK, and present the essential information in an effort to boost participation. The UK has one of the lowest rate of electoral participation by young people in the OECD, especially at local elections, and we hope to play a part in using the digital environment to bridge the information gap, writes Joshua Townsley

OpenElections: introducing the largest collection of British election communications in existence

Election leaflets play a central role in general election campaigns. They provide prospective voters with important information ahead of elections and tell them what political parties – and their candidates – stand for. However, as campaigns increasingly tailor their messages to specific voters in specific constituencies, it is difficult to get a broader sense of ... Continue

Campaign spending and voter turnout: does a candidate’s local prominence influence the effect of their spending?

At election time, political candidates in Britain routinely spend significant sums of money on their local campaigns. Generally speaking, the more individual candidates spend, the higher turnout in that constituency. But while some candidates are major contenders in their area, many candidates who are unlikely to win also spend substantial sums on their campaigns. By analysing candidate spending data from the 2010 general election, Siim Trumm, Laura Sudulich and Joshua Townsley find that the money spent by viable contenders has a greater impact on voter turnout than spending by candidates who are unlikely to win

Explaining support for Brexit among would-be MPs in the 2017 general election

Siim Trumm, Caitlin Milazzo, and Joshua Townsley use survey data to explore support for Brexit among 2017 parliamentary candidates. The findings reveal some interesting insights into politicians’ motivations for supporting Brexit. For example, candidates standing in seats with higher Leave support were not significantly more likely to vote Leave themselves. Instead, candidates’ views on immigration and democracy stand out as key determinants of their decision to vote Leave

The 2016 EU Referendum: Explaining Support for Brexit Among Would-Be British MPs

The outcome of the 2016 referendum on European Union membership took many by surprise and has continued to define the political discourse in Britain. Despite there being a growing body of research focused on explaining how voters cast their ballot, we still know little about what motivated our politicians to do the same. In this article, we draw on individual-level survey data from the British Representation Study to explore support for Brexit among parliamentary candidates who stood at the 2017 general election. We find that candidates' political views on immigration and democracy were key determinants of their decision to vote Leave. In addition, more optimistic views of how Brexit was expected to impact British economy and democracy are associated with greater likelihood of voting Leave. These findings highlight that, while politicians were less likely than voters to support Brexit overall, their motivations for doing so were quite similar. Interestingly, however, we also find that candidates contesting constituencies with higher Leave support were no more likely to vote for Brexit themselves. Taken together, these findings have important implications for elite representation of voters' policy preferences on the issue of Brexit

Conceived in Harlesden: Candidate-Centred Campaigning in British General Elections

© 2018 The Author(s) 2018. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Hansard Society; all rights reserved. Recent decades have seen an increasing trend towards the personalisation of election campaigns, even in systems where candidates have few structural incentives to emphasise their personal appeal. In this article, we build on a growing literature that points to the importance of candidate characteristics in determining electoral success. Using a dataset composed of more than 3700 leaflets distributed during the 2015 and 2017 general elections, we explore the conditions under which messages emphasising the personal characteristics of prospective parliamentary candidates appear in British general election campaign materials. Even when we account for party affiliation, we find that there are important contextual and individual-level factors that predict the use of candidate-centred messaging

Exploring State Department of Education Grading Guidance during COVID-19: A Model for Future Emergency Remote Learning

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many United States brick-and-mortar schools in Spring 2020 rapidly transitioned to emergency remote learning. School leaders grappled with how grades ought to fit within the many unknowns of K-12 remote education. In some cases, schools modified their grading scales to give students greater flexibility to pass courses, and in other situations, schools offered incomplete grades in lieu of failures. During this time, state departments of education (DOEs) provided a variety of guidance documents to their school districts. The purpose of this study was to explore the components of state DOE grading guidance during the Spring 2020 school shutdown, along with the patterns of guidance across states. The researchers applied a grounded theory approach to systematically explore the equivalent of 1,444 pages of documents from 48 state DOE guidelines. The document analysis resulted in three primary categories that influenced state DOE grading guidance: guiding principles, student advancement, and determining grades. The researchers conclude by presenting and discussing a three-category model for emergency remote learning grading guidelines for K-12 schools. In the event of another pandemic temporarily affecting the delivery of education to students, policymakers may use this model as a starting point for future recommendations

Does a candidate's local prominence influence the effect of their campaign spending?

Generally speaking, the more individual candidates spend on their campaigns, the higher turnout in that constituency. Siim Trumm, Laura Sudulich and Joshua Townsley find that the money spent by viable contenders has a greater impact on voter turnout than spending by those who are unlikely to win