ABSTRACT
This study of constituency campaigning in the 1992 general election has shown very clearly, we would suggest, that the easy generalisation made in many academic studies — that, in modern conditions, local campaigning is merely a ritual, a small and insignificant side-show to the main event — is seriously misleading. To be sure, many local campaigns consist of small bands of dedicated volunteers going through the motions in the time-honoured way. A great deal of campaigning is indeed unimaginative and routine. But then much the same could be said of politics in general. Such comments really miss the point. As our account has shown, local campaigning, taken as a whole, is a very significant element in any general election. It actively involves many thousands of people in the electoral process, the parties nationally devote huge resources to it, it is an important source of news for local newspapers and radio and it reaches an enormous number of voters directly. If there were no local campaigning, general elections would be very much less diverse and colourful events and, we have argued, election outcomes would be significantly different.
