CHALLENGERS, INCUMBENTS AND THE IMPACT OF CONSTITUENCY CAMPAIGNING INBRITAIN

Johnston and Pattie have consistently argued that constituency campaig ning in British general elections has beneficial effects on the perfor mance of challenging parties but not on that of incumbent parties. It is difficult to explain why this should be so, however, and a more sat isfactory formulation is that the impact of campaigning will vary acco rding to the pre-existing electoral strength of a party in a constitue ncy. This was the case in the 1992 general election, but the picture i s complicated by the fact that the campaigns of the different parties had differential impacts. Furthermore, the differences between the par ties in terms of campaign effect appear to be more important than diff erences arising from previous electoral strength. This suggests that f urther research in the area should take account of the receptiveness o f different kinds of voters to the campaigning efforts of the parties. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd.