Constituency Campaigning in the 2015 British General Election

选区层面的竞选活动已经成为英国所有主要政党的选举战略的关键，一部重要的学术文献--最初被视为“修正主义者”--已经出现。这项现在被认为是主流的工作揭示了许多事情，包括竞选活动随着时间的推移发生了怎样的变化；政党如何应对社会、选民和自己政党内部的更广泛的变化；以及政党能够在多大程度上有效地利用其资源来打赢选举。他们还为有关党内权力的讨论提供了信息--中央党组织能够在多大程度上协调选区党内竞选活动，以及有多少权力留给基层。最后，它们加深了我们对选民对政党暗示的反应，以及选民可以动员起来的程度的理解。这项研究将考察2015年英国大选的选区竞选活动，不仅将提供始于1992年的独特而有价值的时间序列的延续，还将提供一个创新计划，进一步加深我们对竞选活动在现代政治舞台上的影响、作用和性质的理解。这项研究将寻求解决四个潜在的研究问题：1)选区竞选活动对选举的影响？2)竞选技巧是如何演变的？3)政党竞选组织是如何演变的？4)选区竞选活动对不同选民群体的影响是什么？这项研究将展示通过调查选举代理人收集的数据、候选人支出数据，以及通过主要英国选举研究(BES)和英国选举研究互联网小组(BESIP)收集的个人水平数据。它将对2015年选区竞选的风格和强度提供经验性的描述；调查政党中央组织在规划和管理选区竞选活动中的作用；收集选民对竞选活动(包括长期和短期)的看法的数据，并从政党选票份额和投票率两个方面调查选民竞选活动在变化的选举背景下的选举效果。这项久负盛名的研究也将有创新。主要是：将研究扩展到来自英国独立党的候选人；详细关注电子竞选技巧；进一步关注成员和支持者在竞选中的作用；更多地关注候选人的影响，以及应用新的和改进的方法来了解竞选活动对选民的影响。这项研究还将汇集这项研究和自1992年以来所有以前的选区竞选研究的数据，并将这些数据与同一时期的候选人支出数据、人口普查和地理数据结合起来。这将允许广泛的纵向分析、更大的假设检验和理论构建。例如，汇集这些数据将使我们能够分析边界修订对地方政党开展有效后续竞选活动的能力的影响；随着时间的推移，衡量自由竞选努力是否比产生费用的努力更具选举效力；政党越来越严格地确定目标的过程是否对投票率产生影响；竞选强度和风格是否因地理和社会构成而异，以及在政党胜算不大的席位开展竞选活动是否对随后的地方政府选举有任何选举好处。

Constituency level campaigning has become crucial to the electoral strategies of all the major parties in Britain, and a significant academic literature - initially regarded as 'revisionist' - has emerged. This work - now regarded as mainstream - has revealed many things including how campaigns have changed over time; how parties have responded to wider changes in society, the electorate, and within their own parties; and the degree to which parties are able to harness their resources effectively to fight elections. They have also informed discussions about power within parties - how far central party organisations are able to coordinate constituency party campaigns and how much is left to the grass-roots. And finally, they have furthered our understanding of how voters respond to cues from the parties, and the extent to which voters can be mobilized. This study will examine constituency campaigning at the 2015 British General Election and will provide not only a continuation of a unique and valuable time series that began in 1992, but also a programme of innovation that furthers our understanding of the impact, role, and nature of campaigns in the modern political arena. The study will seek to address four underlying research questions: 1) What is the electoral impact of constituency campaigns? 2) How have campaign techniques evolved? 3) How are party campaign organisations evolving? 4) What is the impact of constituency campaigns on different groups of electors? The study will feature data gathered through a survey of election agents, candidate spending data, and individual level data captured through the main British Election Study (BES) and the British Election Study Internet Panel (BESIP). It will provide an empirical account of the style and intensity of constituency campaigning in 2015; investigate the role of the parties' central organisations in planning and managing constituency campaigns; gather data on voter perceptions of the campaigns (both long and short), and investigate the electoral effects of constituency campaigning in a changed electoral context both in terms of party votes shares and turnout. There will also be innovations to this well established study. Principally: extending the study to candidates from UKIP; a detailed focus on e-campaigning techniques; an extended focus on the role of members and supporters in campaigns; greater focus on candidate effects, and the application of new and improved methods for understanding the impact of campaigns on electors. The study will also pool data from this study and all previous constituency campaign studies dating back to 1992 and combine these with candidate spending data, census and geographic data over the same period. This will permit extensive longitudinal analysis, greater hypothesis testing and theory building. The pooling of these data will allow us, for example, to analyse of the impact of boundary revisions on local parties' abilities to mount effective subsequent campaigns; to measure over time whether free campaign efforts are more electorally effective than those that incur cost; whether the process of increasingly rigorous targeting by parties impacts upon turnout; whether campaign intensity and style varies by geography and social composition, and whether campaigning in seats where parties have little prospect of victory is of any electoral benefit in subsequent local government elections.