ABSTRACT
THE systematic study of the effects of local political party campaign activities has been a somewhat neglected area in the literature concerning political campaigns. This relative lack of attention seems particularly unfortunate given the extremely large number of local political offices that are sought each year at a campaign cost of many millions of dollars and countless thousands of person-hours of volunteer labor. Accordingly, the present report is offered as an extension of earlier work that in its overview attempts to comment on the effectiveness of grassroots campaign activities (see Miller & Robyn, 1975a, 1975b; Miller & Richey, 1980; Miller, Bositis, & Baer, 1981; Baer, Bositis, & Miller, 1981; Miller, 1981). More specifically, the subject of this particular chapter is the precinct committeeman’s role in the transmission of cognitive information in local-level elections. There are two important reasons why the communication of cognitive campaign information at the grassroots level is such an important subject of study. In general, they both have to do with the fact that one of the primary functions of political party activity is to persuade undecided voters to support their candidates (Crotty, 1971; Blydenburgh, 1971).
