How Party Campaigns Sway Tactical Voting in Britain

📊 What Was Studied:

This research examines how party campaign contacts affect tactical voting decisions among voters who have tactical incentives in three UK elections. The focus is on whether campaign outreach encourages voters to remain loyal to preferred but nonviable parties or to defect to alternative viable parties.

📋 How Voters Were Tracked and Why This Matters:

• Panel data within each election was exploited to follow the same voters over the course of the campaign.
• This within-election panel design addresses endogeneity in party behavior — campaign actions that might otherwise bias estimates of campaign effects.
• The analysis isolates the effect of party contacts on tactical voting, separate from voters' demographic traits and the broader electoral context.

🔍 Key Findings:

• Party contacts during campaigns have measurable effects on tactical voting choices.
• Contacts can encourage two distinct responses among voters with tactical incentives:
• Loyalty to a preferred but nonviable party.
• Defection to an alternative party that is seen as viable.
• These effects are observed across three UK elections, indicating that campaign outreach plays a direct role in shaping tactical decisions beyond static voter characteristics.

⚖️ Why It Matters:

Relatively little is known about what drives voters to cast tactical ballots beyond demographics and electoral circumstances. Demonstrating that party contacts can both sustain loyalty to nonviable parties and prompt defection to viable alternatives highlights campaign outreach as a consequential force in electoral behavior and in understanding tactical voting dynamics.