The effects of local campaigning in Great Britain

Abstract

Political parties devote many resources to local campaigning to contact voters directly. But parties do not choose to contact voters at random; they contact those voters they believe more likely to be swayed. This strategic behaviour introduces an empirical challenge: separating the effect of contact itself from the selection effect — the fact that contacted voters may be more likely to be swayed in the first place. I rely on the panel structure of the British Election Study to separate the effect of contact itself from the selection effect for the 2015, 2017, and 2019 General Elections. My findings show that parties successfully increase their support through local campaigning by a combination of conversion and mobilization. The effectiveness of local campaigning is relative similar throughout the three elections, despite the very different electoral environments.