Getting Your Hands Dirty During Election Campaigns: Parliamentary Candidates and MPs in the Constituency

The investigation of candidate and MPs’ election campaign activities is often framed through pursuit of the personal vote. Recent research has demonstrated that candidates are spending more time in the constituency campaigning and developing various campaigning styles, resulting in positive electoral effects (Fisher et al 2016). Yet, the majority of time and effort during campaigning is spent doing ‘on the ground’ activities in order to shape and maintain local ties with their constituency. This neglect of constituency activities on the ground is also demonstrated in dominant media narratives, with some cases reflecting mainly what is posted online, with examples frequently drawn from social media presences, the use of digital tools, and their digital strategies (Broersma and Graham, 2012, 2013). There remains a gap on how traditional and digital campaign activities are prioritised, carried out, and if this varies between candidates and incumbent MPs. This paper investigates how traditional political communication methods are prioritised between candidates and incumbents vis-a-vis new forms of campaigning and why this is the case. Data for the paper are drawn from the Representative Audit of Britain survey, semi-structured interviews and ethnographic research with MPs carried out between 2015 and 2017. We show three key findings. First, candidates and MPs acknowledge the importance of engaging with digital tools, but prefer face-to-face activities such as door-to-door knocking when they need to build a connection with their constituents. Second, incumbent MPs are more likely than the candidates to carry out face-to-face activities. Third, candidates are more likely to rely on digital tools such as Twitter and Facebook when they are in need to build a wider profile to help not only their campaign but also the party campaign. Taken together, our findings suggest claims of a new, ‘digital politics’ are premature. Digital tools are considered complementary, rather than a replacement for traditional on the ground campaigning.