Party volunteers up and down the country (and especially in marginal seats) are pounding the streets campaigning on their party’s behalf. But what sort of effect, if any, do they really have? Charles Pattie, Ron Johnston and Todd Hartman show that while doorstep campaigning is unlikely to change people’s political opinions, it is particularly effective at persuading a party’s existing supporters to turn out to vote – especially if they are Lib Dems

Hartman, Todd K.

Johnston, Ron

Pattie, Charles

LSE Research Online

By Democratic Audit UK 2017-5-31Party canvassers don’t change people’s opinions, but theydo persuade them to votedemocraticaudit.com /2017/05/31/party-canvassers-dont-change-peoples-opinions-but-they-do-persuade-them-to-vote/Party volunteers up and down the country (and especially in marginal seats) are pounding the streets campaigningon their party’s behalf. But what sort of effect, if any, do they really have? Charles Pattie, Ron Johnston and ToddHartman show that while doorstep campaigning is unlikely to change people’s political opinions, it is particularlyeffective at persuading a party’s existing supporters to turn out to vote – especially if they are Lib Dems.Lib Dems on the streets in Haringey, north London. Phot: Haringey Liberal Democrats via a CC-BY-ND 2.0licenceNational campaigns, organised from party HQs, are always vital at general elections. Such campaigns are changing,too; 2017 may yet prove to be the campaign when social media begins to achieve major cut-through as a vehicle forelectioneering (the Conservatives, for instance, have used digital platforms such as Facebook to disseminateadvertising attacking their opponents)..But spare a thought for the parties’ local volunteers and members. Largely unsung, they spend the electioncampaign (and much time before then, too) putting up signs and posters in front gardens and windows, deliveringelection leaflets, canvassing voters, staffing high street campaign stalls, all in an effort to help their candidate tovictory. In total, a substantial amount of time, effort and money (around £22.6 million in 2015, most of it raisedlocally) is expended on candidates’ constituency campaigns.Does all this local campaign effort make any tangible difference to the election results? A large body of evidenceshows the major parties focus their greatest constituency campaign efforts on their most marginal contests, theconstituencies where a few votes either way might change the result. And it pays off. Other things being equal, theharder parties campaign in a constituency, the better they do there, and the worse their rivals do. Parties ignore theirlocal battles at their peril.That said, when one party is well ahead of its rivals in the national vote competition, constituency campaign effortsmight affect the eventual size, but not the fact, of the winner’s parliamentary majority.But if (as seems to be the case) constituency campaigns do affect party performance locally, how do they do so?1/6One way in which they might is by changing voters’ political opinions. A common (though not very accurate) view ofparty canvassing is that activists try to persuade sceptical voters to change their minds and accept the canvasser’sparty’s position and policies. We might refer to this as the ‘persuasion hypothesis’.An alternative, and somewhat different, means by which constituency campaigns might affect the results ofelections is by encouraging as many as possible of those already predisposed to the canvassing party to actuallyturn out and vote for it (call it the ‘mobilisation hypothesis’).To examine the evidence for these hypotheses, we turn to the 2015 British Election Study Internet Panel, a largesurvey of British voters which interviewed the same individuals on several occasions between February 2014 andMay 2015, the latter just after the general election. Crucially for our purposes, they were asked, on severaloccasions, about their political opinions, their voting intentions before the election, how they actually voted, and,most importantly, whether they had been contacted by any of the major parties. This lets us examine whether thosewho were contacted by a party were more likely to change their political views than those who were not contacted(persuasion) or to turn out and vote for the party (mobilisation). We focus on what people reported in February 2014and immediately after the election in May 2016.Fifty-nine percent of survey respondents did report some contact from the parties during the 2015 campaign: 40%were contacted by the Conservatives, 45% by Labour and 27% by the Liberal Democrats. Leaflets were by far themost common form of contact, received by over 90% of those reached by each of the three parties. Home visitsduring the election campaign (the traditional vehicle for party canvassing) were reported by 16% of those contactedby the Conservatives, 22% of those contacted by Labour, and 12% of those contacted by the Liberal Democrats.Around one in five of those contacted by Labour and the Conservatives, and 15% of those contacted by the LiberalDemocrats said they had been emailed. No other form of contact was reported by more than 10% of thosecontacted.This hardly supports the ‘ideal’ image of in-depth doorstep conversations between party volunteers and voters.Election leaflets are poor substitutes, and many will have gone rapidly from voters’ doormats to their bins havingbeen read (if at all) only deeply enough to note which party had delivered the leaflet; and emails may go into thetrash bin without careful reading. How voters reported experiencing the local campaign in 2015, therefore, does notsound conducive to strong ‘persuasion’ effects: who, realistically, is liable to change their political outlook based on(cursorily examined) election leaflets?But we should not dismiss the possibility out of hand. What does the evidence say? The British Election Study askedrespondents, in both February 2014 and May 2015, to place themselves on a left-right political scale (with 0indicating the most left-wing position possible, 10, the most right-wing). Because the same people answered thequestion on both occasions, we can see just how much (or how little) their position on this basic political dimensionshifted over the course of the year. Subtracting each individual’s left-right score in February 2014 from their score inMay 2015 gives us a scale which runs from a minimum of -10 to a maximum of +10. Individuals who put themselvesin the same location on the left-right scale on both occasions will have a score of 0; those who moved to the rightover the period will have a positive score (and the more positive, the larger the move to the right); those who movedto the left will have a negative score (again, the more negative the further to the left they will have moved).As the left-right dimension is one of the basic political divides in British politics, most people have relatively clearviews of where they stand. Very few individuals changed their minds much between February 2014 and March2015: 81% of individuals moved no more than one point right or left on the scale between the two dates – and giventhe imprecision of the scale (while most of us will have a good sense of roughly where on the scale we might sit, noteven the most politically aware among us are likely to know of exactly which number on it best captures our view)this could well be simple random measurement error.That said, some individuals moved rather further on the scale (and a very few claimed to have moved all the wayfrom far left to far right, or vice versa). So were those contacted by the parties during the election campaign more2/6likely to shift their ideological position (and in the direction of the party by which they were contacted) than thosewho were not contacted?The answer is a clear ‘no’! As the following graphs show, whether people were contacted had no influence onwhether, how far, or in which direction people shifted their left-right positions. The graphs show the median changein ideological position (the thick black line in each box), the inter-quartile range (the top and bottom of each box: themiddle 50% of individuals lie inside this box) and the maximum and minimum changes. The fact that the median forthose contacted by the party (on the right of the figure) is almost identical to that of those not contacted by it (on theleft) shows that party contact did not have a distinctive effect on whether people shifted their position on the left-rightscale. (We have also looked at whether being contacted by the Liberal Democrats, the centre party in UK politics,moved people way from either extreme on the left-right scale and into the centre: it did not).3/6So much for the ‘persuasion’ hypothesis. Whatever local campaigners were doing, they were not changing mostpeople’s political opinions.What about the mobilisation hypothesis? Did being contacted by a party make people more likely to turn out andvote for it? We look at this by comparing how people said they intended to vote when asked in February 2014 withhow they actually voted in 2015. For each party, we look at two groups of voters: those who said they did not intendto vote for a party when asked at the start of 2014; and those who said they would vote for the party when asked in2014. We then look at the percentage who went on to vote for the party in 2015. Were those contacted by a partyduring the 2015 election campaign more likely to be either joiners or loyalists than those not contacted?4/6The first graph looks at those who did not plan to vote for a party in February 2014. As this group contains not justpeople who might consider voting for the party but also people who would never do so, it is hardly surprising thatonly relatively low percentages went on to vote for each party in 2015. Only 8% of those who did not originally intendto vote Labour and who were not contacted by Labour during the election went on to vote for the party in 2015. Butregardless of the party, those contacted were more likely (by between 5 and 8 percentage points) to switch and votefor it than were those who were not.And, as the next graph shows, being contacted by a party’s campaign made those who had originally planned tovote for it more likely to stay loyal to it. Among this group, unsurprisingly, higher percentages went on to vote for theparty across the board than was the case for our previous group of ‘joiners’. After all, these voters were alreadyleaning towards the party in question. But, once again, those contacted by the party they originally intended to votefor were noticeably more likely to go on and do so in 2015 than were those not contacted (by between 6 and 13percentage points – the largest ‘boost’ was for the Liberal Democrats).Even though the local campaign is primarily experienced through ephemeral leaflets and fleeting contacts whichhave little or no effect on voters’ opinions and political views, they do mobilise support. Ask (by contacting voters),and you’re more likely to get.5/6This post represents the views of the authors and not those of Democratic Audit.Charles Pattie (left/above) is a Professor in the Department of Geography at the University ofSheffield.Ron Johnston is a Professor in the School of Geographical Sciences at the University ofBristol.Todd Hartman is a Lecturer in Quantitative Methods at the University of Sheffield.6/6

Party canvassers don’t change people’s opinions, but they do persuade them to vote

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

LSE Research Online