The Effectiveness of Leader Visits during the 2010 British General Election Campaign

Abstract

This article shows

• The impact of leader visits on local results in general election campaigns.
• The importance of party leaders in contemporary election campaigns.
• That leader visits impact vote share but not turnout.
• The extent to which incumbency plays an important part in leader visit effectiveness.

The leaders of the three largest political parties in the UK spent a significant proportion of the 2010 general election campaign touring constituencies. However, the potential impact of such visits upon local party vote share and constituency turnout has remained relatively unstudied. This article, using original data collected in 2010, is the first to examine leader visits during UK election campaigns. The constituencies visited are typically marginal, and while Gordon Brown mostly limited his visits to Labour-held constituencies, the leaders of the other two parties ran more expansionist visit strategies. Exploring the ability of leader visits to affect turnout and vote share, the analysis shows that visits made no impact on local turnout, but the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats received a boost in vote share in constituencies when their leaders visited. Disaggregating this further, these boosts were received primarily in seats held by Labour prior to the election.