The Professor Will See You Now: Canvassing
4 min read
In an occasional series, Professor Philip Cowley offers a political science lesson for The House’s readers. This week: canvassing
Professor David Denver, who died in August last year, began his book Elections and Voting Behaviour in Britain with the words: “Elections are fun”. Now in its sixth edition, and much updated (and renamed), it remains perhaps the single best textbook on British electoral behaviour, one that has helped generations of undergraduates – including many years ago, this one – get through their studies.
Another of David’s claims to fame was that he was involved in what is widely believed to be the first field experiment carried out in British psephology. Identifying two blocks of flats in a safe Labour ward in Dundee, and with the agreement of the local Labour Party – no one else did any canvassing – he arranged for a full-on campaign to take place in one block and the bare minimum to be done in the other.
Those ‘Lib Dems Winning Here’ signs really do work
Published in the British Journal of Political Science in 1971, the study found turnout was 10 percentage points higher in the experimental block compared to the control, with Labour’s share of the vote up too. Experiments are now de rigueur in the social sciences, but this was cutting-edge stuff at the time.
For readers of this magazine, many of whom like nothing more than knocking on a stranger’s door, the idea that local campaigning has an electoral payoff may seem obvious – but at the time it ran counter to much of the understanding of elections, which had increasingly become seen as national-level events, in which all the important action took place on TV. Grassroots campaigning was seen as a relic, carried out to give activists something to do rather than being of any import.
David also helped establish a wider study of constituency-level campaigning in the UK which has now run for 30 years – and has, more broadly, demonstrated the benefits of local campaigning.
A recent publication from that team has just been published in Political Studies, examining one of the mechanisms by which local campaigns work: helping to establish the viability of candidates and campaigns in the voters’ eyes.
Drawing on British Election Study data from the three general elections of 2015, 2017 and 2019, the research shows that perceptions of electoral viability change during a campaign – and that one of the key things that make them change is campaign activity by the local party. As the authors write: “The more campaign contacts from a particular party a voter received, the greater the improvement in their perceptions of the possibility of that party winning in the constituency.”
The largest effect found was with the Lib Dems; those “Lib Dems Winning Here” signs really do work. Comparing the lowest levels of campaign exposure with the greatest, the improvement in the perception of a candidate’s election performance was between nine and 13 percentage points for Lib Dem candidates. For Labour, the effect was between four and 11 points. For the Tories, for the two contests which achieved statistical significance, they were five and six points.
These aren’t large enough effects to persuade voters that a no-hoper candidate is about to romp home – but they could matter in more marginal races, encouraging people to volunteer or enabling tactical voting. Or in some cases it might mean voting for the person they most want to win – but previously thought out of the race.
In short, when you go out in the wind and rain to fight the good fight, armed only with a pile of leaflets and a warm coat, you aren’t wasting your time.
Further reading: J Bochel and D Denver, Canvassing, Turnout and Party Support: An Experiment, British Journal of Political Science (1971); J Fisher et al, Innocent Bystanders or the Forgotten Actors? The Role of Parties and Candidates in Building Electoral Campaign Momentum, Political Studies (2025)
