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Tactical Voting and Party Constituency Campaigning at the 1992 General Election in England

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2009

E. A. Fieldhouse ,
C. J. Pattie  and
R. J. Johnston
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Extract

Tactical voting has become increasingly salient in recent elections in England. However, it is not only voters who behave tactically. Political parties may also act tactically by focusing their election campaigns on marginal seats. This Note provides a unique exploration of the relationship between local campaigning and tactical voting in England, at the 1992 general election.

Type
Notes and Comments
Information
British Journal of Political Science , Volume 26 , Issue 3 , July 1996 , pp. 403 - 418
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1996

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References

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9 Heath, A., Jowell, R., Curtice, J., Evans, G., Field, J. and Witherspoon, S., Understanding Political Change (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1991), p. 53.Google Scholar Estimates from most aggregate data are remarkably close to this. However, one study put the estimated proportion of tactical voters at the 1987 election as high as 17 per cent: Niemi, R., Whitten, G. and Franklin, M., ‘Constituency Characteristics, Individual Characteristics and Tactical Voting in the 1987 British General Election’, British Journal of Political Science, 22 (1992), 229–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar This has been severely criticized on grounds of measurement error: Evans, G. and Heath, A., ‘A Tactical Error in the Analysis of Tactical Voting’, British Journal of Political Science, 23 (1993), 131–7.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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21 Evans, , ‘Tactical Voting and Labour's Prospects’.Google Scholar

22 Evans, , ‘Tactical Voting and Labour's Prospects’.Google Scholar