ABSTRACT
Although the use of the term 'targeting' with reference to election campaigning may be relatively new, the activity that it describes is not. Party organizers at regional and national levels have long realized that under the British electoral system the great majority of seats rarely change hands and have, therefore, attempted to concentrate the local campaign effort on what are variously called 'target', 'key', 'critical' or 'battleground' seats. Even in the 1950s and 1960s, when resources and attention were increasingly devoted to the national campaign, the parties were well aware that winning marginal seats was crucial to their chances of winning elections, and that additional local efforts in those seats might pay handsome rewards. Thus as long ago as the 1959 general election, the Nuffield study commented on 'the ruthless emphasis on marginal seats' (Butler and Rose, 1960: 135), and the study of the 1964 election reported that 'a much more explicit concentration on marginal seats was a feature of the campaign both for Conservatives and for Labour' (Butler and King, 1965: 216).
