Voting in the House or Wooing the Voters at Home: Labour MPs and the 2001 General Election Campaign

Abstract

Part of Labour's strategy for winning a second full term of government at the 2001 general election in the UK involved encouraging its MPs, especially those holding marginal seats, to spend considerable time in their constituencies in the preceding years, contacting voters and promoting the party's cause. Given the size of its majority in 1997, it was able to afford for many MPs to be absent from divisions in the House of Commons. This article looks at the voting records of Labour MPs who stood for re-election in 2001 during the two preceding parliamentary sessions. It reports that backbench MPs representing marginal constituencies were much more likely to be absent from the House during the last session prior to the election. Those absences were also apparently related to their performance at the election: the more often they absented themselves from parliamentary votes in that session (compared to the previous session) the better their performance at the 2001 election relative to national trends.