assessing the television campaign: the impact of party election broadcasting on voters'...

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Assessing the TelevisionCampaign: The Impact ofParty Election Broadcasting onVoters' Opinions in the 1997British General ElectionC. J. Pattie & R. J. JohnstonPublished online: 10 Nov 2010.

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333

Political Communication, 19:333–358, 2002Copyright ã 2002 Taylor & Francis1058-4609 /02 $12.00 + .00DOI: 10.1080/0195747029005553 8

Assessing the Television Campaign: The Impactof Party Election Broadcasting on Voters’ Opinions

in the 1997 British General Election

C. J. PATTIE and R. J. JOHNSTON

Although paid television and radio political advertising is banned in the United Kingdom,parties fielding sufficient candidates are entitled to free air time during election campaignsfor a fixed number of party election broadcasts (PEBs). Over the years, parties haveexperimented with a variety of different PEB formats. But the impact of PEBs onvoters is underresearched. This article therefore analyzes the influence of PEB view-ing in the 1997 British General Election. Though a majority do not view PEBs, thosewho do are influenced by them, especially in terms of their evaluations of partiesand their leaders: Other things being equal, viewers of a party’s PEBs become morefavorably disposed to the party and its leader than those who do not see the broad-cast. Labour and Conservative PEBs have no impact on vote intentions, however.But viewers of Liberal Democrat broadcasts become more likely to support that party.We speculate that this reflects different background levels of media exposure for themajor parties as compared to the third party.

Keywords election broadcasting, television campaigns, voting behavior

C. J. Pattie teaches in the Department of Geography at the University of Sheffield. R. J.Johnston teaches in the School of Geographical Sciences at the University of Bristol.

The analyses reported here draw on the British Election Study 1997 campaign survey. Thedata used in this article were gathered by the Centre for Research into Elections and Social Trends(CREST) and were supplied to us by the ESRC Data Archive, University of Essex. We are also inthe debt of two anonymous referees and David Swanson for comments on an earlier version ofthis article.

Address correspondence to C. J. Pattie, Department of Geography, University of Sheffield,Sheffield S10 2TN, United Kingdom. E-mail: [email protected]

The advent of mass television audiences in the second half of the 20th century radicallyaltered the nature of election campaigning in the United Kingdom, as in most Westernsocieties. Pre-television campaigns were typified by mass meetings up and down thecountry addressed by leading politicians who relied on their oratorical powers to gettheir messages across. Gladstone’s barnstorming Midlothian campaigns in the late 19thcentury are archetypal examples in British politics. But the electronic media transformedthe scene. In the United Kingdom, parties were first allowed to use radio to appeal tovoters in the 1924 election: Radio broadcasts remained important campaign devices upto the 1955 election (Rosenbaum, 1997). Since then, however, they have been eclipsed

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334 C. J. Pattie and R. J. Johnston

in importance by the parties’ party election broadcasts on television. The party electionbroadcast (or PEB—they are referred to as party political broadcasts during nonelectionperiods) is as near as British television comes to political advertising. Each party isentitled to make and broadcast a preagreed number of (typically) 5- to 10-minute PEBsduring the election campaign; editorial control is in the hands of the parties themselves.The first party broadcasts (originally 15-minute broadcasts made by the parties them-selves) on British television took place during the 1951 election, but it took some timefor politicians to adjust to the new medium. Until the 1959 election, the parties enjoyeda virtual monopoly of British television political coverage during elections, since thebroadcasters themselves avoided political coverage in their news services for fear ofcharges of bias. The 1959 election was the first in which the major broadcasters alsoincluded election coverage in their own news bulletins.

The impact of radio and television on political campaigning was profound. Partyleaders no longer had to go “on the road” to reach the mass of voters. Instead of givingthe same speech again and again to a series of mass meetings, they could deliver itonce, direct to voters in their own homes, via the television camera. Attendance at po-litical rallies declined severely. Indeed, for some, the advent of the television campaignsounded the death knell for local campaigning in the latter part of the century (e.g.,Kavanagh, 1970; Butler & Kavanagh, 1988). In fact, the local campaign remained im-portant in terms of mobilizing voters (see, e.g., Johnston, 1987; Pattie, Johnston, &Fieldhouse, 1995; Denver & Hands, 1997; Whiteley & Seyd, 1994). But it was certainlya less important vehicle for getting the parties’ core messages across to the electoratethan had previously been the case.

The national television campaign environment in the United Kingdom is dominatedby two elements, therefore: news and current affairs broadcasting and party politicalbroadcasts. While the former is governed by conventions of impartiality and parityof coverage across parties, the latter provide the parties with a forum within whichthey can put across their message, untrammeled by the broadcasters and unchallengedby their rivals. The allocation of PEBs depends upon the (sometimes reluctant) agree-ment between broadcasters and parties. As the largest parties, Labour and the Conser-vatives receive the same number of broadcast slots (normally between five and seven),broadcast on all terrestrial channels, during an election campaign, with fewer slotsallocated to the smaller parties. In the 1997 General Election, Labour and the Conserva-tives were allocated five PEBs each, while the Liberal Democrats, SNP, and PC weregiven four (SNP and PC broadcasts were restricted to Scottish and Welsh televisionchannels, respectively). Minor parties fielding 50 or more candidates were also entitledto one PEB in 1997, and eight parties made use of this to reach a wider audience thanusual.

Over the years, these party broadcasts have become increasingly sophisticated, andsome have entered election folklore. They form the nearest equivalent, on the Britishpolitical scene, to the television advertising that plays such a visible role in North Americanelections (Jamieson, 1992a, 1992b). Recent research has focused on the political impactof television news reporting in the U.K. (see, e.g., Miller, Clarke, Harrop, Leduc, &Whiteley, 1990; Miller, 1991; Norris, Curtice, Sanders, Scammell, & Semetko, 1999;Norris, 2000). Yet, PEBs remain under-researched. We know remarkably little abouthow they impact upon voters. Do they have any bearing on vote intention, for instance?In this article, we employ data from the 1997 British Election Campaign Study to ad-dress this important lacuna.

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Assessing the Television Campaign 335

The Party Election Broadcast in Context

In many ways, party political broadcasts (of which PEBs are a special case) represent apeculiarly British compromise to the problems of political advertising on television andradio. In the early years of party broadcasts, the state-run BBC had a monopoly overbroadcasting within the United Kingdom (ITV, the first U.K. commercial channel, wenton the air in 1955 and did not start broadcasting PPBs until 1956). The Corporation was(and still is) barred from accepting paid advertising. Instead, in the 1951 General Elec-tion, as part of its public service remit, it gave the main parties 15 minutes each to maketheir case directly to television viewers (Rosenbaum, 1997). Furthermore, until the 1959general election, the BBC avoided news reporting of election campaigns: in the 1951and 1955 contests, therefore, PEBs were the only vehicle by which the campaign couldbe covered on television.

Thereafter, television news and current affairs broadcasting took on an increasingrole in informing the public. But the framework surrounding terrestrial broadcasting inthe U.K. enjoined broadcasters to aim for impartiality in their coverage. In practice, thismeans news broadcasters aim for rough parity in the time given to the coverage of eachmajor party and for broad balance in tone (so, e.g., if a Conservative politician is invitedto give a view on a news broadcast, a Labour politician is invited too). To some extent,the allocation (though not the content) of PEBs has reflected the broadcasters’ need toachieve balance. Labour and the Conservatives, as the two largest parties of the postwarperiod, are generally allocated the same number of PEBs each. Smaller parties’ entitle-ments to PEBs have been more variable, and in 1997 depended on the number of candi-dates put forward (that election saw a record number of parties broadcasting a PEB, asall parties that fielded 50 or more candidates were allowed one broadcast; Munro, 1998).Distinctively, the parties do not pay for airtime for their PEBs; these are not paid adver-tising slots. Indeed, buying extra political advertising is not allowed on U.K. terrestrialchannels. Parties are restricted to their PEB entitlements. In this way, the PEB systemavoids the risk of rich parties being able to “swamp” their poorer rivals on the airwaves.

That said, the parties have become increasingly sophisticated in how they employPEBs. Early broadcasts often consisted of “talking heads,” senior politicians presentinga short speech straight to the camera or taking part in a staged interview (Rosenbaum,1997; Scammell, 1995; Kavanagh, 1995). The talking head format is still used (duringthe 1997 election, for instance, John Major gave a straight-to-camera talk, asking bothvoters and his party not to “tie my hands” over Europe), but other formats have alsobecome common. Both Labour and Conservatives have produced PEBs focusing solelyon the character of the party leader, for instance (as with Labour’s 1987 “Kinnock”broadcast or the Conservatives’ 1992 “The Journey” PEB, in which John Major revis-ited his childhood haunts; Allan, Atkinson, & Montgomery, 1995). And both have madeuse of “infomercial” styles and narrative election broadcasts. One notable example ofthe latter was Labour’s “Jennifer’s Ear” PEB in 1992, in which two young children,both with painful ear infections, receive very different treatment depending on whethertheir parents could afford private medical care or had to rely on the National HealthService (NHS). At times, PEBs verged on the surreal (as with Labour’s 1997 “Fitz theBulldog” broadcast, in which the eponymous dog, symbol of Britishness, sunk deep indepression and lethargy after 18 years of Conservative rule, became progressively morealert as Tony Blair laid out the case for New Labour; Harrison, 1997).

PEBs also vary greatly in tone. Some are positive, stressing the party’s vision forthe future. Others are negative, attacking the supposed misdemeanors and failings of

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rivals. Some are deliberately disturbing (a memorable PPB in the run-up to the 1997election showed various members of the public being menaced by a distinctly frighten-ing shadowy creature whose claw-like hand threatened to steal away their earnings).Others are much more benign: Again in 1997 one Labour PEB told the story of a fathertaking his young daughter home in a taxi after a long wait for treatment in a hospitalcasualty department on the night of the polls. Worried about the state of the NHS andfearful of a Conservative victory, he talks to the cab driver, expressing his regret that hewill now not be able to get to the polling booth in time to cast his vote for New Labour.As father and daughter leave the cab, we realize that the cab driver is, in fact, an angel,and has turned the clocks back a few hours: The father can get treatment for his sickchild and can still vote for a new beginning. As Harrison (1997, p. 153) wryly notes,“echoes of the James Stewart film, Its a Wonderful Life”! Most television advertising inBritain must conform to industry standards; in the words of the Advertising StandardsAuthority, it must be “legal, honest and decent.” However, political advertising is largelyexempt from this; little attempt is usually made to control or to censor PEBs. A rareexception came in 1997, when the Pro-Life Alliance proposed using its PEB to showfilm of an abortion; in the event, the PEB was broadcast minus the abortion footage.

Understanding the Impact ofElection Campaigns in the Mass Media

Much of the research on the impact of television political advertising has been con-ducted in the United States. In part, this is a function of the considerable scope forpolitical advertising on television in the U.S., with parties, candidates, and supporters allable to buy airtime at commercial rates. In contrast to the U.K., access to television inthe U.S. is governed much more by party or candidate spending power than by broad-casters’ attempts at achieving cross-party “balance.”

In part, too, it is because of a general interest in the dynamic effects of electioncampaigns themselves. Both Gelman and King (1993) and Holbrook (1996) have ad-dressed the apparent paradox between the volatility of polls during campaigns and theaccuracy of vote predictions made before campaigns start. Even though the outcome canbe seen in advance, there is still evidence of considerable “churning” in the electoratethroughout the campaign. Their “solution” to this paradox is to argue that campaignsprovide an otherwise uninformed electorate with the salient material for a “rational”decision. Gelman and King (1993) in particular downplay the impact of advertising assuch, and argue that the campaign serves to improve voter knowledge of where candi-dates stand on the major issues.

Even so, there remains a considerable debate over the impact of political advertis-ing in U.S. elections. In a study of the 1988 Democratic presidential primaries, forinstance, West (1994) argued that advertising played an important part in establishingcandidates’ claims to be “electable”:

Dukakis’ advertising . . . had indirect consequences for the vote throughviews regarding electability. The strongest predictor of electability in thismodel was exposure to spot commercials. More so than race, sex or partisanship,those who saw ads prior to Super Tuesday were more likely to see the Massachusettsgovernor as the most electable Democrat. (p. 806)

Nor is the impact of advertising necessarily simple or uniform to all adverts. Differ-ent styles of advertising might have different (and sometimes unintended) impacts on

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voters. Masterson and Biggers (1986), for instance, provide experimental evidence sug-gesting that viewers’ feelings toward candidates were affected by viewing their tele-vision advertising. Their evidence, however, is not conclusive, and suggests the impactmight be small. Equally, controversy has surrounded the “attack advertising” phenom-enon, in which candidates seek to undermine their rivals’ claims and reputations. Forsome, attack advertising results in growing public cynicism and reduced participation(Ansolabehere, Iyengar, Simon, & Valentino, 1994; Ansolabehere & Iyengar, 1995; butsee Freedman & Goldstein, 1999).

The American literature reveals a lively and active debate. By contrast, only a handfulof studies have examined the impact of British PEBs systematically. This is despite theconsiderable thought and imagination that goes into the making of PEBs. Nor is itsimply a matter of the use of intellectual capital. PEBs are costly. Even though theparties do not pay for airtime, they do pay for the production of their PEBs (althoughsome work may be on a pro bono basis). In 1997, the three main parties claimed tohave spent £1.3 million in total on PEBs (around half a million each spent by Labourand the Conservatives; Norris et al., 1999; Neill Report, 1998). But does it matter?Many viewers find PEBs less than riveting viewing. Anecdotes abound of viewers usingPEBs as a chance to leave the room between programs or as an excuse for switchingchannels. In 1997, the average audience for an individual Labour or Conservative PEBwas around 11 million viewers, down from 13 million in 1992 (Norris et al., 1999,p. 88). To put this into perspective, there were almost 44 million registered voters in1997; on average, only about a quarter of the electorate watched any particular majorparty broadcast. That said, more saw at least one PEB in the course of the campaign.When asked in the latter stages of the campaign whether they had seen a PEB in thepreceding week, about a third of respondents to the 1997 British Election CampaignStudy said they had (Table 1).

This might not matter in itself, if the PEBs had a sizeable impact on those who didwatch them. However, we have little idea of the impact of party broadcasts on theelectorate. In contrast with the news media (both the press and the electronic newsbroadcasters), the impact of PEBs on voters remains remarkably underresearched (forwork on the press and television news, see Miller et al., 1990; Miller, 1991; Curtice &Semetko, 1994; Wober, Svennig, & Gunter, 1986; Wober, Brosius, & Weinmann, 1996;Norris et al., 1999). Much of the published research on the subject has concerned thecontent of PEBs rather than the impact. Studies of political communications tend to

Table 1Did you see a party election broadcast in the last seven days?

Party broadcast

Conservative Labour Liberal Democrat Any PEB(%) (%) (%) (%)

Did not see 78.4 77.3 80.4 68.3Did see 21.6 22.7 19.6 31.7

N 1,312 1,312 1,312 1,312

Source: BES campaign study, 1997, Wave C.

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stress PEBs from the parties’ point of view, discussing the thinking behind their broad-cast strategy, as well as insights into their postmortems (e.g., Crewe & Harrop, 1986,1989; Crewe & Gosschalk, 1995; Crewe, Gosschalk, & Bartle, 1998).

One of the few major studies to address the issue is over 30 years old and is basedon an analysis of television viewing in the 1964 British General Election (Blumler &McQuail, 1968). The study reveals that exposure to television coverage (including partyelection broadcasts) of the campaigns of the two major parties, the Conservatives andLabour, served mainly to reinforce the views of already committed voters. But tele-vision exposure to the Liberal campaign won uncommitted voters over: The more Lib-eral PEBs the uncommitted saw, for instance, the more likely they were to become morefavorably disposed toward the Liberals. In part, Blumler and McQuail (1968, p. 220)argue, this is a consequence of the improved exposure the Liberals received during thecampaign. As the third party in British politics (and as a very small player in the politicsof the late 1950s and early 1960s), the Liberals struggled to obtain much media cover-age during “normal” times. But the onset of the election campaign helped raise theparty’s public profile. Perhaps worth noting here is that the rules covering the allocationof television time between the parties changed between the 1959 and 1964 elections,becoming more favorable for the Liberals. In the earlier election, the Liberal televisionquota gave the party only a quarter of the airtime available to Labour and the Conserva-tives; by 1964, the Liberal share had risen to 60% of the Conservative and Labourquotas. Not only did the television campaign help raise the Liberals’ standing in thepublic mind, therefore, but they had more chances to do it. And PEBs seem to havebeen an important aspect of the Liberals’ campaign.

Wober’s (1989) study of party broadcasts over the 1985–1987 period is anotherrare exception. His analysis of BARB (Broadcasters’ Audience Research Board) diarydata found some evidence that interelection party broadcasts did have an impact onviewers’ attitudes. Particularly for broadcasts by opposition parties, he found evidencethat viewers became more likely to agree with a party’s view, especially where the issueat hand was seen as “not particularly important” (Wober, 1989, p. 146). But party elec-tion broadcasts during the 1987 election campaign did not seem to have any impact onviewers’ attitudes. Furthermore, broadcasts by the third party, the Liberal-SDP Alliance,seemed least effective in influencing viewers’ attitudes.

In addition, work on the 1987 campaign suggests that voters did not see televisionPEBs as particularly important information sources on election issues. But PEBs werethought almost as useful as the press when it came to providing information on leader-ship matters and as an influence on the vote (Miller, 1991, p. 127).

Despite these few studies, however, television PEBs remain a seriously underresearchedelement of British political life. In the remainder of this article, therefore, we examinetheir impact upon voters during the 1997 campaign.

Measuring the Impact of PEBs

The 1997 British Election Study Campaign Panel (BEPS) gives us a valuable opportu-nity to study the impact of PEBs in British elections. The panel was recruited from the1996 British Social Attitudes Study (BSAS) cross section. The first wave of the panel(Wave A) therefore contains respondents’ answers to the full range of BSAS questionsand gives us a snapshot of their views a year before the 1997 election (interviewingtook place in spring 1996). The panel was contacted again on three separate occasions.The second wave was conducted early in the 1997 election campaign (Wave B, a 15-

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minute telephone interview conducted between April 1 and 16, 1997). Respondents werecontacted again in the final 2 weeks of the campaign (Wave C, again a 15-minute tele-phone interview, taking place between April 17 and 30, 1997). They were contacted fora final time just after the election had taken place (Wave D, a 5-minute telephone inter-view). Wave A was the most wide-ranging in terms of content. Waves B and C concen-trated on exposure to the media, vote intention, images of parties and leaders, and so on.Wave D was concerned primarily with capturing how respondents had actually voted.Overall, 2,277 respondents took part in the panel.1

As part of the Wave C survey, respondents were asked “Have you watched all orpart of any party election broadcast on television during the last 7 days?” Those sayingyes were then prompted to name all of the parties whose PEBs they saw. This gives usa rough measure of exposure to PEBs in midcampaign (between about the 10th and23rd of April, depending on when the Wave C interview was conducted). Because ofthe panel nature of the survey, we are able to compare respondents’ vote intentions andattitudes toward each party and leader both before and after exposure to a PEB. Thefollowing discussion reports primarily on attitude change during the election campaignitself, between Waves B and C. Where possible, however, we have repeated our analy-ses looking at change between Waves A and C (preelection to late campaign) and WavesB and D (early campaign to postelection). In general, our conclusions remain unchanged.

There are, we must acknowledge, some problems in using panel data here, in addi-tion to the well-known phenomenon of panel conditioning (i.e., the very act of partici-pation in the panel may make respondents more likely to pay attention to campaignreporting than other voters who are not in the panel). Importantly, the “official” 1997election campaign, set in motion on March 17, 1997, when Prime Minister Major an-nounced the election date, represents only the tip of a much longer unofficial campaignthat had been taking place for much of the preceding year. The parties had already putconsiderable effort into a range of devices for reaching the electorate (including one ofthe most-talked-of political adverts of the late 1990s in Britain, the Conservatives’ “de-mon eyes” poster, which purported to show Labour’s leader in a demonic, dangerouslight; the first posters of this particular campaign were posted in the summer of 1996).The electorate had already been bombarded by campaign material, therefore. Also, thepanel survey does not allow us access to voters’ understandings and reactions to cam-paign material, nor does it allow us to conduct controlled experiments with media expo-sure (in the style of Ansolabehere & Iyengar, 1995). Even so, we would argue that thecurrent exercise is worthwhile, partly because the parties themselves invest large sumsof money in their “official” as well as their “unofficial” campaigns, with the PEB as animportant element of the former. And even in 1997, many voters (27% of all those whovoted, according to the 1997 BES cross section) were still undecided at the start of thecampaign. There was still scope for the official campaign—and the PEBs as part ofthat—to sway sufficient voters to affect the outcome of even the 1997 election.

We investigate the impact of party election broadcasts on six areas of political opin-ion: vote intention, images of party leaders, party images, attitudes on policy issues,democratic accountability, and the impact of parties on public policy. Responses in thelater waves of the panel (generally Wave C but occasionally Wave D) are regressed onresponses to the same question in earlier waves (Wave A or B), and on three dummyvariables recording whether the respondent remembered watching a Conservative, Labour,or Liberal Democrat PEB between Wave B and Wave C. Controlling for respondents’earlier views on the dependent variable allows us to concentrate on how their attitudeshave changed over time and to see whether exposure to a party’s PEB has had any

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impact. It also controls for the possibility that responses to PEBs are conditionedby prior political leanings (e.g., we might expect a Conservative supporter to be moreimpressed by that party’s broadcast than a Labour supporter). But by controlling forprevious views, we largely factor this possibility out.

The Impact on Vote

A central function in any party’s political campaign is persuading voters to support it.What impact did PEBs have, if any, on voting in the 1997 election? In some respects,1997 looked like a particularly inauspicious election in which to find campaign effects.The result of the election seemed a foregone conclusion, as the Conservative govern-ment had trailed far behind the Labour opposition in opinion polls since just after the1992 election (Sanders, 1996; Denver, 1997). Indeed, just under three quarters of votersclaimed to have made up their minds before the 1997 campaign even began. In fact,however, similar proportions of voters claimed to have decided before the campaign inboth the (close) 1992 election and the 1987 contest (Table 2). If anything, rather morevoters decided during the campaign in 1997 than in the previous contests. In part, thismay have been a function of tactical voting (the British term for strategic voting), whichwas relatively widespread in 1997 (Johnston et al., 1997, 1998; Evans, Curtice, & Norris,1998; Curtice & Park, 1999). Eleven percent of voters in the 1997 BES cross sectionsaid they had voted tactically, and 47% of these tactical voters said they decided duringthe campaign, compared to only 24% of those who did not vote tactically. Even so,80% of those who decided during the 1997 campaign were not tactical voters. Despiteappearances, therefore, around a quarter of the electorate was still open to persuasionduring the 1997 election campaign itself. Over the course of the campaign, each of thethree main parties “lost” (either to other parties or to abstention) around 25% of thosewho said they intended voting for it when the campaign started. There was a reasonablylarge minority of potential swing voters who could be reached by PEBs. Even so, as wehave seen, PEB viewing was not high: A large majority of voters did not see a partybroadcast between Waves B and C (Table 1).

Party broadcasts may still have had an influence on the vote decisions of those whodid see them, however. Were those who saw a party’s broadcast more likely to switchtheir vote intention toward that party, and away from its rivals, than were those who didnot see the broadcast? This is investigated here by modeling vote intention after expo-sure to PEBs as a function of vote intention before exposure and PEB viewing. At both

Table 2When did you decide how to vote?

1987 1992 1997(%) (%) (%)

A long time ago 62.2 59.7 55.8Sometime last year 8.2 6.7 8.2Sometime this year 8.8 9.6 9.2During the election campaign 20.7 23.9 26.6

N 3,269 2,488 2,282

Source: BES cross sections, 1987, 1992, 1997.

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Waves B and C of the BEPS panel, respondents were asked how they intended to vote,and at Wave D, they were asked for their actual vote. These data were recoded into ninedummy variables: two “intend to vote Conservative” variables (one each for Waves Band C; Conservative voters were coded 1, other voters were coded 0), two “intend tovote Labour” variables, two “intend to vote Liberal Democrat” variables, and three dummiesrecording actual vote at wave D (one each for Conservative, Labour, and Liberal Demo-crat vote). In addition, three further dummy variables were constructed to reflect PEBviewing between Waves B and C: a Conservative PEB dummy (coded 1 if the respon-dent had seen a Conservative PEB in the previous week), a Labour PEB dummy, and aLiberal Democrat PEB dummy.

Two sets of models were investigated. In the first set, the dependent variables werethe Wave C vote intention dummies (CON

C, LAB

C, LD

C); these models therefore assess

the impact of PEB viewing on vote intention shortly after viewing, but before the end ofthe campaign. In each equation, we include all three PEB viewing dummy variables(CONPEB, LABPEB, LDPEB). We also include dummies for vote intention at Wave B(CON

B, LAB

B, LD

B).2 Since the questions about PEB viewing refer to broadcasts occur-

ring between Waves B and C, this gives us a measure of vote intention before exposureto the PEBs. By including vote intention at Wave B as an independent variable, we bothfocus on change in vote intention and control for the possibility that a party’s supporterswill be the most likely to watch its PEBs. Our estimates of the impacts of PEB viewingare therefore net of prior partisanship. Formally, the first set of models can be stated as:

CONC

= f(CONB,

CONPEB, LABPEB, LDPEB).

LABC

= f(LABB,


LDC

= f(LDB,


The dependent variables for the second set of models were the Wave D vote dummies,allowing us to see whether any PEB effects were long-lasting enough to have a bearingon actual vote. Formally,

COND

= f(CONB,


LABD

= f(LABB,


LDD

= f(LDB,


Since the dependent variables in all six equations are binary dummies, we employ logis-tic regression.

Not surprisingly, especially over the short time periods we are considering here,previous vote intention had a large influence on vote intention at Wave C and on vote atWave D (Table 3A). As indicated by the large, positive, and highly significant coeffi-cients for previous vote intention, people who supported a party at an earlier wave werevery likely indeed to support it again at the later wave. More important for us, however,is the impact of PEB viewing, net of previous vote intention. Overall, once we controlfor vote intention at the start of the campaign, support for the two largest parties, theConservatives and Labour, was generally unaffected by election broadcast viewing. Butseeing a Liberal Democrat PEB did increase the chances of an individual expressing anintention to vote for the party. Other things being equal, voters who saw a Liberal

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Table 3Impact of election broadcast viewing on vote intention: logistic regressions

A: Vote choice and vote

Vote intention, Wave C Con Lab Lib DemActual vote, Wave D Con Lab Lib DemIntend to vote Con (Wave B) 6.33** 4.91**Intend to vote Lab (Wave B) 5.84** 3.85**Intend to vote LD (Wave B) 5.03** 3.92**Watched Conservative PEB (Wave C) 0.40 0.40 –0.69 0.65 0.73* –0.87*Watched Labour PEB (Wave C) 0.22 –0.26 0.10 –0.11 –0.30 0.12Watched Lib Dem PEB (Wave C) –1.12 –0.82 1.54** –0.52 –0.11 1.11**

Constant –0.85 –0.53 –0.22 –1.15 –0.64 –0.51Initial –2 log-likelihood 1,262.67 1,450.40 897.38 1,237.07 1,476.80 955.97Model improvement 941.06 999.65 443.32 715.81 613.83 336.96Significance .00 .00 .00 .00 .00 .00% correctly classified 96.14 94.20 93.86 91.77 84.58 91.02N 1,046 1,045 1,047 1,084 1,084 1,085

B: Party loyalty during campaign

Vote intention, Wave B Con Lab Lib Dem Con Lab Lib DemVote intention, Wave C Con Lab Lib DemActual vote, Wave D Con Lab Lib DemWatched Conservative PEB (Wave C) 0.49 0.73 –0.42 0.66 1.03** –0.45Watched Labour PEB (Wave C) –0.80 –0.07 0.04 –0.16 0.09 0.56Watched Lib Dem PEB (Wave C) –0.37 –1.20** 0.18 –0.55 –0.35 0.37

Constant 2.52 2.55 1.87 1.29 1.37 1.37Initial –2 log-likelihood 152.69 278.75 98.97 329.19 594.31 138.81Model improvement 3.30 10.80 0.44 4.42 17.46 1.92Significance .35 .01 .93 .22 .00 .59% correctly classified 93.34 92.82 87.15 79.68 76.89 78.56N 312 540 129 326 550 134

C: Switching to parties during campaign

Vote intention, Wave B Not Con Not Lab Not LD Not Con Not Lab Not LDVote intention, Wave C Con Lab Lib DemActual vote, Wave D Con Lab Lib DemWatched Conservative PEB (Wave C) 0.35 –0.37 –0.83* 1.07 –0.91 –1.04**Watched Labour PEB (Wave C) –0.13 0.13 0.39 –0.74 –0.19 0.09Watched Lib Dem PEB (Wave C) –0.94 0.50 1.40** –0.45 0.40 1.32**

Constant –4.01 –3.18 –2.94 –3.72 –2.80 –2.56Initial –2 log-likelihood 154.28 160.50 354.09 181.08 255.54 485.24Model improvement 2.15 1.08 21.29 4.34 5.18 23.10Significance .54 .78 .00 .23 .16 .00% correctly classified 97.80 96.25 95.15 97.41 93.46 92.88N 729 501 912 753 529 945

*p = .05; **p = .01Source: BES campaign study, 1997, Wave C and Wave D.

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Democrat PEB were 4.7 times more likely to say they would vote for the party in thelast weeks of the campaign than were voters who did not see a PEB.3 Nor was this avery short-term effect. It was still in evidence, albeit to a lesser extent, after the election.Once we control for intending to vote Liberal Democrat at the start of the electioncampaign, those who reported seeing a Liberal Democrat PEB in midcampaign were 3times more likely to have voted for the party than were those who did not see one.However, exposure to a Conservative PEB reduced the chances of actually voting Lib-eral Democrat by just under a half, once prior support for the party is taken into ac-count. Intriguingly, however, exposure to Conservative PEBs actually increased the chancesof voting Labour, even when we control for prior expressions of support for Labour.Perhaps worthy of note here is that several of the Conservative PEBs in 1997 werenegative in tone, attacking Labour and trying to paint a negative picture of Britain undera Labour government. North American experimental studies suggest that negative adver-tising can have an effect, driving voters away from the ballot box (Ansolabehere &Iyengar, 1995). Similar experimental studies in the U.K. find little evidence that nega-tive television news (not PEB) coverage has much impact on British voters (Sanders &Norris, 1998; Norris et al., 1999). However, the panel data here suggest otherwise andseem to point to the possibility that the Conservatives’ decision to “go negative” insome of their PEBs actually backfired on the party.

The models presented above give some insights into the impact of PEBs on voteintentions, therefore. But they tell us relatively little about whether PEBs encouragedparty loyalists or won new recruits. To investigate this, we require information on theflow of party support over the course of the campaign. Unfortunately, small cell sizespreclude a detailed analysis of flows between particular parties. However, we are able tolook at the extent to which parties were able to hold on to those who said they wouldvote for them at the start of the campaign. And we are also able to look at parties’abilities to win “new” recruits among those who had previously said they would votefor another party.

The impact of PEB viewing on party loyalty was assessed by restricting analysis tothose who said they intended voting for a party at the start of the campaign (Wave B)and modeling whether they still supported it either later in the campaign (Wave C) orhad actually voted for it (Wave D). For instance, by looking just at those who in WaveB said they intended voting Conservative and then seeing whether they still intendeddoing so in Wave C, we get insights into Conservative loyalty. The independent vari-ables were the PEB viewing dummy variables. Overall, PEB viewing had little impactupon party loyalty (Table 3B). The logistic regression equations are generally poor fitsto the data. Only two models, both for Labour loyalty, produced a significant improve-ment in the log-likelihood, for instance, and most coefficients were insignificant. Onlytwo coefficients achieved statistical significance, both in Labour loyalty equations. Amongthose who had intended voting Labour at Wave B, viewers of Liberal Democrat PEBswere less likely to say they would vote Labour again at Wave C than were those whohad not seen a Liberal Democrat broadcast. However, the “effect” did not reappearwhen actual voting was modeled. But Wave B Labour supporters who had seen a Con-servative PEB during the campaign were more likely actually to vote Labour than wereWave B Labour supporters who had not seen a Conservative broadcast. The Conserva-tives’ efforts seem to have further alienated supporters of the main opposition party,presumably by reminding them why they had rejected the government in the first place.

By restricting analysis to those who, in Wave B, said they would not vote for aparticular party and analyzing whether they did support it at subsequent waves, we can

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gain insights into PEBs’ impact on winning over new recruits (Table 3C). The picturehere is more consistent than for party loyalty. PEB viewing had no discernible associa-tion with switching to either Conservative or Labour support over the course of thecampaign. However, among those who did not initially think they would vote LiberalDemocrat, those who saw a Conservative PEB became more likely to support the Lib-eral Democrats later in the campaign, and to vote for the party, than those who did notsee a Conservative broadcast. And the Liberal Democrats’ own PEBs proved a valuablevote recruiting resource. Compared to those who had not seen a Liberal Democrat broad-cast, voters who initially did not intend voting for the party but who had seen one of itsPEBs were around 4 times more likely to support it later in the campaign, and around3.7 times more likely to actually vote for it.

If the primary aim of PEBs is to influence voting decisions, therefore, they seem tobe doing a poor job for the two largest parties but a much more effective job for thethird party. This is, perhaps, a reflection of the tendency of the two major parties todominate media coverage of politics in the interelection period. Most news reportingtends to focus on the doings of the government and the official opposition, and in everypostwar Parliament that has meant Labour and the Conservatives. Most voters would beexpected to be well aware of the policy positions of the major parties, therefore, and tohave already formed opinions about them. By contrast, elections provide one of the fewoccasions when the Liberal Democrats are able to gain near parity of media exposure.Furthermore, there are proportionately fewer very strong Liberal Democrat partisans thanthere are very strong Labour or Conservative supporters. The Liberal Democrats there-fore have a harder job to do mobilizing support than do the major parties. Their PEBswould seem to serve as an important vehicle by which they can get their message acrossto the electorate.

It could be argued, however, that vote intention is too crude a measure by which toevaluate the impact of PEBs. Election broadcast viewers might find themselves becom-ing more favorably disposed toward a party, but not sufficiently so to give it their vote.If this is the case, then repeated exposure to a party’s election broadcasts throughout acampaign might, cumulatively, result in support for that party. So do PEBs influencevoters’ feelings toward parties? One way of investigating this is to look at voters’ self-assessments of the probability they will vote for a party. In both Waves B and C of the1997 BEPS, respondents were asked:

I would like you to think . . . of a scale from nought to ten, where noughtmeans there is absolutely no chance that you will vote for a particular partyin the general election and ten means that you will definitely vote for thatparty. What mark out of ten best describes how likely you are to vote for (ANAMED PARTY)?

This, therefore, provides us with a subtler measure of PEBs’ impact on voters’ supportfor parties. Once again, we regress respondents’ answers to the question at Wave C ontheir answers at Wave B, and on their exposure to Conservative, Labour, and LiberalDemocrat election broadcasts in the intervening period. Since the dependent variablehere approximates to interval level measurement, however, we use conventional ordi-nary least squares regression to estimate our models. Despite the differences in depen-dent variables, the results are remarkably similar to those for the vote intention models(Table 4). Self-assessed probability of voting for a party at Wave B is a strong predictorof self-assessed probability at Wave C. As was the case with vote intention, once prior

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self-assessed voting probabilities are taken into account, election broadcast viewing hadno discernible effect on the probability of voting for either the Conservatives or Labourin the last weeks of the campaign. But election broadcast viewing did make a differencein regard to self-assessed chances of voting Liberal Democrat. Other things being equal,those who said they had seen a Liberal Democrat broadcast between Waves B and Cscored on average almost 1 point higher on the 11-point scale for probability of votingLiberal Democrat at Wave C than did those who had not seen a broadcast by the party.And those who saw a Conservative PEB scored just under three quarters of a pointlower on their self-assessed probability of voting Liberal Democrat than did those whohad not seen a Conservative broadcast. Once again, it was support for the third party,not the two major parties, that was most affected by election broadcasts.

Election Broadcasts and Party Leader Images

Party election broadcasts may project subtler messages than just appeals for votes. Forinstance, they can serve as important vehicles for the projection of party leaders. Theleader’s public persona can play an important part in making or breaking support for aparty (Crewe & King, 1994; Clarke, Stewart, & Whiteley, 1997, 1998). Election broad-casts provide a forum within which parties can control the leader images they present tothe electorate. Notable examples in British politics include Labour’s semipresidential“Kinnock” broadcast in 1987 and the Conservatives’ 1992 “The Journey” broadcast, inwhich John Major returned to his South London roots. Nor is the projection of leader-ship images restricted to prepackaged and “spun” broadcasts: The “talking head” for-mat, in which the party leader makes an appeal directly to the camera, remains one ofthe standard formats of the genre.

BEPS respondents were asked to evaluate the party leaders in both Waves B andC of the survey. John Major, the incumbent Conservative prime minister, and TonyBlair, leader of the Labour opposition, were evaluated on four dimensions: being caring,

Table 4Impact of election broadcasts on probability of voting for party: OLS regressions

Probability of voting for party, Wave C

Conservative Labour Liberal Democrat

Prob of voting Con (Wave B) 0.90**Prob of voting Lab (Wave B) 0.85**Prob of voting LD (Wave B) 0.76**Saw Conservative PEB (Wave C) 0.26 -0.00 –0.71**Saw Labour PEB (Wave C) –0.16 -0.08 0.32Saw Lib Dem PEB (Wave C) –0.23 0.09 0.94**

Constant 0.34 0.72 0.87R2 0.79 0.70 0.50N 1,312 1,312 1,312

*p = .05; **p = .01.Source: BES campaign study, 1997, Wave C.

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decisive, principled, and a strong leader. In each case, the answers were coded as binaryresponses, with positive attributions coded as 1 and negative attributions as 0 (the rela-tively small number of respondents who coded the leaders as “neither” caring nor uncar-ing, and so on, were excluded from the analysis). Once again, therefore, we use logisticregression, with Wave C response as the dependent variable and Wave B response andPEB exposure dummies as the independents.

As with vote, evaluations of the party leaders on the four dimensions at the start ofthe election campaign were very strong predictors of evaluations at the end of the cam-paign (Table 5). Most voters did not change their minds about the party leaders in thecourse of the campaign. However, some did. And there is some evidence that PEBviewing did have an impact upon their evaluations, especially for the “strong leader”dimension. Other things being equal, and controlling for previous views of John Major,voters who saw Conservative PEBs were about twice as likely to think Mr. Major acaring and a strong leader by the end of the campaign as those who did not see aConservative PEB (Table 5A). Furthermore, those who saw a Labour PEB were lesslikely to see him as a strong leader at the end of the campaign than were those who didnot see a Labour PEB. Seeing a Liberal Democrat PEB, meanwhile, had the intriguingeffect of boosting one’s evaluation of Major’s standing as a strong leader.

The impact of PEB viewing on evaluations of Tony Blair, meanwhile, was restrictedto the “strong leader” dimension. Controlling for their evaluations of his strength ofleadership at the start of the campaign, voters who saw a Labour PEB between Waves Band C were 2.6 times more likely to think Mr. Blair a strong leader by the end of thecampaign than were voters who did not see one. But Mr. Blair’s leadership potentialbecame weaker among those who had seen a Conservative PEB.

Of course, the crucial question regarding party leaders is their potential as primeministers. Being seen as, for instance, a caring person does not necessarily mean acandidate is suitable for that office. Indeed, one of the most successful of British post-war prime ministers, Mrs. Thatcher, achieved generally poor “caring” ratings, with littleor no apparent implications for her standing as a prime ministerial contender. We there-fore examine a further BEPS question. Respondents were asked, in both Waves B andC, to evaluate whether Major, Blair, and Paddy Ashdown (leader of the Liberal Demo-crats) would make a good prime minister. Four answers were possible: Each party leaderwas assessed on whether he would do a very good job as prime minister, quite good,not very good, or not at all good. We have recoded these prime ministerial potentialvariables into two categories: very or quite good (coded 1) and not very or not at allgood (coded 0). Once again, we use logistic regression to analyze PEBs’ impact (Table6). As before, the dependent variable is evaluation of prime ministerial potential at WaveC, and the independents are evaluations of prime ministerial potential at Wave B andthe PEB exposure dummies.

Party election broadcast viewing made no difference in regard to voters’ evalua-tions of John Major’s suitability for the job of prime minister. Of course, Mr. Majorhad, by this stage, held the top job for six and a half years (making him one of thelongest-serving prime ministers of the 20th century). Voters had already had ample op-portunity to make a judgment on his suitability for the job, based on his record in office.His two challengers, Mr. Blair and Mr. Ashdown, were more uncertain quantities. Al-though both were well-known politicians, both had spent their entire political careers inopposition, and neither had ever held major government office. As we might expect,therefore, both received a positive boost from their respective party election broadcasts.Those who saw a Labour PEB were, by the end of the campaign, 2.4 times more likely

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Table 5Impact of election broadcasts on party leaders’ images: logistic regressions

Wave C

StrongCaring Decisive leader Principled

A: John Major

Major caring (Wave B) 3.82**Major decisive (Wave B) 3.01**Major strong leader (Wave B) 3.36**Major principled (Wave B) 3.31**Watched Conservative PEB (Wave C) 0.79* 0.23 0.81** 0.25Watched Labour PEB (Wave C) –0.15 –0.40 –0.99** 0.03Watched Lib Dem PEB (Wave C) –0.23 –0.15 0.66* –0.14

Constant 0.52 –0.45 –0.08 0.13Initial –2 log-likelihood 1,504.03 1,556.98 1,700.30 1,608.27Model improvement 647.04 486.06 629.01 583.99Significance .00 .00 .00 .00% correctly classified 88.21 82.58 83.98 84.14N 1,218 1,185 1,251 1,175

B: Tony Blair

Blair caring (Wave B) 3.68**Blair decisive (Wave B) 2.65**Blair strong leader (Wave B) 3.21**Blair principled (Wave B) 3.18**Watched Conservative PEB (Wave C) 0.22 –0.10 –0.77* –0.15Watched Labour PEB (Wave C) 0.02 0.23 0.95** 0.38Watched Lib Dem PEB (Wave C) 0.82 0.39 0.10 –0.04

Constant 1.70 1.04 0.86 0.52Initial –2 log-likelihood 830.96 1,204.99 1,176.05 1,246.10Model improvement 303.03 290.97 370.93 415.47Significance .00 .00 .00 .00% correctly classified 91.71 82.03 87.26 84.58N 1,118 1,108 1,132 998


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to think Mr. Blair would be a good prime minister than were those who had not seenone. The impact of Liberal Democrat PEBs on Mr. Ashdown’s standing was similar.

Election Broadcasts and Party Images

If elections are in part about choosing leaders, they are also (and perhaps more impor-tantly in the U.K. context) about choosing parties. What impact did PEBs have on theimages voters formed of parties? The BES campaign panel respondents were asked, inboth Waves B and C, to rate the Conservative and Labour parties on a range of issues:Were the parties united or divided? Were they good for all classes, or good for onlyone? Were they (or were they not) capable of strong government? and Would they (orwould they not) stand up for Britain abroad? In each case, the respondents gave one oftwo answers (nonrespondents and those who said “neither” were omitted from the analysis),so logistic regression is employed (Table 7). As before, Wave C responses are the de-pendent variables, and “positive” image attributes (united, good for all classes, capableof strong government, stands up for Britain) are coded 1, while negative attributes arecoded 0. The first block of results looks at images of the Conservative party (Table 7A),while the second block looks at Labour party images (Table 7B).

In general, the results suggest that voters’ views of both main parties were alreadyfairly well established and were not influenced by party election broadcasts during thecampaign. In all equations, party image at the start of the campaign is a very good guideto party image at the end of the campaign. And in the “united/divided,” “good for allclasses,” and “stands up for Britain” equations, they are the only significant variables.

Table 6Impact of election broadcasts on public perceptions

of suitability as PM: logistic regressions

Wave C

Major Blair Ashdowngood PM good PM good PM

Major good PM (Wave B) 3.49**Blair good PM (Wave B) 3.23**Ashdown good PM (Wave B) 3.04**Watched Conservative PEB (Wave C) 0.07 –0.65 –0.55Watched Labour PEB (Wave C) –0.35 0.88* 0.46Watched Lib Dem PEB (Wave C) –0.33 0.22 0.87**

Constant –0.30 0.96 0.75Initial –2 log-likelihood 1,785.42 1,202.35 1,485.99Model improvement 703.95 396.28 488.75Significance .00 .00 .00% correctly classified 84.94 86.62 82.04N 1,290 1,141 1,115


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Election broadcasts did nothing to change viewers’ images of the two major parties onthese dimensions. The 1997 election had, of course, been preceded by 5 years of turmoilin the Conservative party, and by 4 years of strenuous coalition building in Labour. Itwas unlikely that viewing a 10-minute broadcast just before the election would undo theimages built up over the preceding parliament.

Table 7Impact of election broadcasts on public perceptions of parties: logistic regressions

Wave C

Good Capable Standsfor all of strong up for

United classes gov’t Britain

A: Perceptions of Conservative party

Con united (Wave B) 2.75**Con good for all classes (Wave B) 4.31**Con capable of strong govt (Wave B) 3.03**Con stands up for Britain (Wave B) 2.66**Watched Conservative PEB (Wave C) 0.59 0.63 0.60* –0.03Watched Labour PEB (Wave C) –0.65 –0.45 –0.24 –0.42Watched Lib Dem PEB (Wave C) –0.05 –0.54 –0.55* 0.16

Constant –1.39 –0.26 –0.25 0.26Initial –2 log-likelihood 870.71 1,435.61 1,632.58 1,434.16Model improvement 181.37 694.56 519.07 364.32Significance .00 .00 .00 .00% correctly classified 88.42 90.09 82.31 79.84N 1,187 1,159 1,208 1,087

B: Perceptions of Labour party

Lab united (Wave B) 2.81**Lab good for all classes (Wave B) 2.58**Lab capable of strong govt (Wave B) 3.20**Lab stands up for Britain (Wave B) 2.67**Watched Conservative PEB (Wave C) 0.28 0.16 –0.70* –0.58Watched Labour PEB (Wave C) –0.06 0.19 0.75* 0.40Watched Lib Dem PEB (Wave C) 0.25 –0.11 0.23 –0.12

Constant 1.02 0.90 0.93 0.38Initial –2 log-likelihood 1,354.15 1,221.53 1,220.45 1,091.57Model improvement 372.87 290.76 416.77 276.39Significance .00 .00 .00 .00% correctly classified 81.37 80.60 84.50 80.65N 1153 1057 1046 862


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However, election broadcast viewing does seem to be associated with changingone’s mind about whether a party could form a strong government. Other things beingequal, seeing a party’s broadcast made viewers more likely to think it capable of stronggovernment. Compared to those who did not see a Conservative PEB, for instance,those who did were almost twice as likely to think the party capable of strong govern-ment at the end of the campaign, even when we control for their views at the start of thecampaign (Table 7A). Labour PEB watchers, meanwhile, were also twice as likely torate Labour capable of strong government after viewing the PEB as those who did notsee it, again controlling for views at the start of the campaign.

So each party’s PEBs do seem to have been associated with a positive improvementin voters’ perceptions of the party on an important dimension over the course of thecampaign. There is a sting in the tail for both parties, however. Voters who viewed arival’s PEB were less likely to think Labour or the Conservatives were capable of stronggovernment than were voters who did not see a rival’s PEB. For instance, those whosaw a Conservative broadcast were about half as likely by the end of the campaign tofeel Labour would be a strong government as were those who did not see a Conserva-tive broadcast. Voters who saw both a Labour and a Conservative broadcast, therefore,would, other things being equal, be only slightly more likely to perceive Labour as astrong party of government afterward than would voters who saw neither party’s broad-cast, since the effects of the two broadcasts would largely cancel each other out. View-ing a Liberal Democrat PEB had a similarly negative impact on perceptions of theConservatives as a party of strong government.

The Impact on Public Opinion

Did party election broadcasts play an “educational” role, by informing voters of where eachparty stood or by persuading them of the logic of a party’s case? Most party broadcastsdo make at least some attempt at presenting a party’s position on the issues or at comment-ing on the views of rivals. But does this have an impact on voters’ opinions? At both WavesB and C of the campaign study, respondents were asked their views on three issues, allof which featured in the election campaign and all of which were emphasized by at leastone party in its PEBs. The issues were the future of the pound in the European Union, thecorrect balance of taxation and public spending, and whether the voting system should bereformed. The European issue had been a strong—if rather confused—element in Conser-vative campaigning (Evans, 1998, 1999). All parties, meanwhile, had “tax and spend”arguments: the Conservatives warning of Labour profligacy; Labour attacking Conserva-tive “spending cuts” and tax rises (one memorable campaign slogan claiming the Conser-vatives were responsible for 22 new taxes), and trying to shield itself from its own tax andspend reputation; and the Liberal Democrats standing clearly for increased taxes andspending. Electoral reform, meanwhile, was a long-standing Liberal Democrat rallying cry.

For the European currency issue, those who wanted to keep the pound as the onlycurrency for the U.K. (the “Eurosceptic” position) were coded 1, while those who wantedboth the pound and the Euro, or just the Euro (a more pro-Europe position) were coded0. On the tax and spend issue, respondents who wanted to increase taxes and publicspending were coded 1, and those who either wanted to maintain the status quo or toreduce taxes and public spending were coded 0. And, in the case of electoral reform,those who were in favor of changing the voting system to one that provided betterrepresentation for small parties were coded 1, while those who favored the retention offirst past the post were coded 0.

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When we investigate the potential impact of party election broadcasts on attitudesfor these three key policy areas, however, there is only limited evidence for any effect(Table 8). Once opinions at the start of the campaign were controlled for, PEBs wereonly associated with “tax and spend” attitudes at the end of the campaign. Other thingsbeing equal, voters who watched Labour PEBs were almost twice as likely in the lastweeks of the campaign to favor higher taxes and public spending as voters who did notsee a Labour broadcast. Labour has traditionally been the party most closely associatedwith public spending in British politics, and it did make much play during its campaignof the adverse effects of Conservative tax and spend policies. Ironically, however, in aneffort to distance itself from its own image, Labour also expended much effort bothbefore and during the 1997 campaign trying to project a new image of fiscal rectitude.Among other things, for instance, the party committed itself to the outgoing government’sspending plans for the first 3 years of a new Labour government. Voters seem to havebeen responding, therefore, to Labour attacks on the Conservatives’ public spendingrecord and, perhaps, to their own expectations of what a Labour government might do.

Attitudes on Europe, meanwhile, were not related to election broadcast viewing.This is despite the Conservatives’ efforts, especially, to establish “clear blue water”between themselves and Labour on the issue, arguing that Labour was “soft” on Europe.That said, European policy was an area of deep, public, and rancorous disagreementwithin the Conservative party itself, and internal divides between Eurosceptics and Euro-philes had done much over the preceding 7 years to erode the party’s public standing.Indeed, one of the most memorable Conservative PEBs of the 1997 campaign featuredJohn Major talking straight to the camera, pleading as much with his increasingly Euro-sceptic party as with the voters to accept his “wait and see” approach to Europe. Europeshould have been a Conservative strength in 1997 but, because of party divisions, itturned into a weakness (Evans, 1998). The party’s PEBs did nothing to alter that.

Table 8Impact of election broadcasts on public opinion on policy: logistic regressions

Wave C

Keep out Inc. tax Change votingof the Euro & spend system

Keep out of the Euro (Wave B) 3.76**Increase tax & spending (Wave B) 2.49**Change voting system (Wave B) 2.56**Watched Conservative PEB (Wave C) 0.51 –0.32 –0.04Watched Labour PEB (Wave C) –0.29 0.59* –0.01Watched Lib Dem PEB (Wave C) –0.38 0.26 0.46

Constant 0.10 0.89 –0.62Initial –2 log-likelihood 1,648.66 1,478.29 1,563.49Model improvement 700.82 339.32 380.46Significance .00 .00 .00% correctly classified 87.05 79.94 78.66N 1,239 1,234 1,252


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Support for electoral reform, too, seemed immune from the influence of PEB watching.The issue did not feature in any major party’s PEBs in 1997. In any case, the parties’positions on the issue were long-established and well-known. Indeed, the Liberal Demo-crats were not only the lone major proponents of reform, having supported the policyfor many years (as had their Liberal and SDP predecessors); electoral reform was, formany voters, almost the only policy clearly associated with the party. Most knew wherethe parties stood on the issue long before the election, therefore, and the parties did littleto push the issue during the campaign. PEBs changed no minds here.

A related issue is the impact of PEBs on voters’ expectations. There is now a largebody of evidence to suggest that expectations are crucial in voting choice. Those whothink things are getting better will vote for a government party, while those who thinkthey are getting worse will vote against it (see, e.g., Sanders, 1996). Did PEBs have anybearing on voters’ expectations? The campaign study respondents were asked, in bothWaves B and C, what they expected to happen to the NHS and to taxes if first theConservatives, and then Labour, were to win the election. Again, both issues were wellworked in 1997’s party election broadcasts (as in Labour’s imaginative “angel taxi driver”broadcast, discussed above). In each case, we have placed respondents into two groups:those who felt things would improve if the party won (coded 1) and those who feltthings would stay the same or get worse (coded 0). The results of the logistic regres-sions are set out in Table 9.

In general, PEBs seem to have had very little impact on voters’ expectations inthese two policy areas. Once we control for expectations at the start of the campaign,

Table 9Perceptions of policy improvement and election broadcast viewing: logistic regressions

Wave C

NHS better if Taxes down if

Con Lab Con Labwin win win win

NHS better if Con win (Wave B) 2.87**NHS better if Lab win (Wave B) 2.14**Taxes down if Con win (Wave B) 2.67**Taxes down if Lab win (Wave B) 3.04**Watched Conservative PEB (Wave C) 0.84* –0.37 –0.42 0.01Watched Labour PEB (Wave C) –0.86* 0.09 –0.02 0.20Watched Lib Dem PEB (Wave C) –0.09 0.41 –0.15 –0.77

Constant –1.32 0.32 –2.07 –2.09Initial –2 log-likelihood 938.66 1,677.13 537.68 554.23Model improvement 210.56 307.69 68.31 112.77Significance .00 .00 .00 .00% correctly classified 88.73 74.83 94.39 94.08N 1,254 1,232 1,244 1,232


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PEB viewing is not related to end of campaign expectations for a Labour government’simpact on the NHS or either a Conservative or a Labour government’s impact on taxes.In the former case, when respondents were asked which party was best for the NHS,Labour was, and had been for many years, seen as far ahead of the Conservatives. Ontaxation, Labour and the Conservatives were both engaged in efforts to parade their ownlow tax credentials and to brand the other party as proponents of “hidden” tax rises.

But party broadcast viewing was associated with changing one’s mind on the likelyimpact a Conservative government might have on the NHS. Controlling for expectationsat the start of the campaign of the Conservatives’ likely impact on the NHS, there issome evidence that PEB viewing had an impact on opinions. Those who saw a Conser-vative PEB were more likely, by the end of the campaign, to think the NHS wouldimprove under a Conservative administration than were those who did not see a Conser-vative PEB. But those who saw a Labour PEB, on the other hand, were less likely thanwere those who did not to think the NHS would improve under the Conservatives. By avery narrow margin, the good work done by the Conservatives PEBs on this issue wasoutweighed by the effect of Labour’s broadcasts. Given the sizes of the coefficients,voters who saw both parties’ PEBs were very slightly less likely to think the NHSwould do well under the Conservatives, other things being equal, than were voters whosaw neither party’s broadcasts.

PEBs and Democratic Accountability

Party broadcasts are one of the few means parties have of appealing to voters in anunmediated, unchallenged fashion. As such, they arguably do play an important role inBritain’s representative democracy. To the extent that they work effectively, then, theyshould help to close any “democratic deficit” between voters and parties. But, at thesame time, there is increasing concern, in Britain as in many other democracies, that thedemocratic deficit is growing (for arguments both for and against this, see the essays inNorris, 1999, and Pharr & Putnam, 2000). And in the United Kingdom, the 1997 elec-tion was fought against a background of sleaze allegations and growing disillusion withpolitics and politicians (Farrell, McAllister, & Studlar, 1998; Pattie & Johnston, 2001).Did PEBs have any impact on public perceptions of the political process? Did theymake voters less cynical, or (as Ansolabehere & Iyengar, 1995, suggest is the case withattack ads in the U.S.) does television advertising by parties actually further alienate thepublic from politics? At the start and end of the 1997 campaign, campaign study re-spondents were asked whether they agreed or disagreed with the following statements:MPs quickly lose touch with voters; parties are “only interested in people’s votes, nottheir opinions”; and it does not matter who is in power. In each case, we have coded allthose who were not cynical (i.e., thought MPs did not lose touch, parties were interestedin opinions, or it did matter who was in power) as 1. All those who gave “cynical”answers were coded 0 (those giving no response or neither agreeing nor disagreeingwere omitted from the analysis).

In fact, with one exception, PEB viewing was not associated with changing viewsof the political process: All bar one of the PEB coefficients in the logistic regressionswere insignificant (Table 10). On a pessimistic reading, PEBs did not help counter votercynicism. On a more optimistic note, at least they did not make things worse! There isno obvious evidence here for the postviewing voter disillusion reported in the U.S. byAnsolabehere and Iyengar (1995). The exception was the relationship between viewingLabour broadcasts and thinking parties were only interested in votes. Other things being

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equal, and controlling for attitudes at the start of the campaign, voters who had seen aLabour PEB during the campaign were twice as likely, by the end of the campaign, tofeel politicians were interested in more than just vote buying as voters who did not see aLabour broadcast. To that extent at least, Labour’s broadcasts do seem to have played apart in diminishing voter disillusion.

Conclusions

Party election broadcasts are now part of the ritual of British elections. They allowparties free (at least in terms of broadcast costs; the parties still pay for production),though regulated, access to the electronic media, in a system that bans paid televisionand radio political advertising. The parties take some efforts over their PEBs, and pro-duction costs can be quite high. However, there is a widespread perception that, fortelevision viewers, PEBs are a turnoff. A minority of the electorate watches them. Themajority seems to respond to them with a mixture of resentment and boredom. So whydo the parties continue to bother?

In part, the answer lies in the lack of other opportunities to get their messagesacross on television and radio in an unmediated format that they can control. Not onlythat, but the airtime is provided at no cost to the parties. This is an electronic gift horse.But does it make a difference?

Table 10Perceptions of democratic accountability and

election broadcast viewing: logistic regressions

Wave C

DoesMPs Parties matterdon’t not only whichlose interested party

touch in votes in power

MPs don’t lose touch (Wave B) 1.12**Parties not only interested in votes (Wave B) 2.02**Does matter which party in power (Wave B) 1.97**Watched Conservative PEB (Wave C) 0.15 –0.29 –0.28Watched Labour PEB (Wave C) –0.37 0.65** 0.22Watched Lib Dem PEB (Wave C) 0.40 –0.12 0.24

Constant –0.74 0.11 0.21Initial –2 log-likelihood 1,446.67 1,707.23 1,771.70Model improvement 58.21 201.53 260.45Significance .00 .00 .00% correctly classified 74.84 72.53 71.90N 1,287 1,289 1,279


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Our analyses of television PEB viewing in the 1997 General Election suggest thatthe broadcasts do have some effects. Parties can use PEBs successfully to project theirleaders’ prime ministerial qualities and (to a lesser extent) to improve voters’ opinionsof the party. The impact on other areas is much weaker, however. There are only limitedimpacts on public opinion, for instance. PEBs do not, on the whole, change voters’minds on the major issues. Nor do they counter (but equally, nor do they increase) votercynicism. Perhaps most important of all, they have little or no impact on voting inten-tions, at least as far as Labour and the Conservatives are concerned.

There is, however, an important exception. Viewing Liberal Democrat broadcasts isassociated with becoming more likely to support that party. Furthermore, perceptions ofthe Liberal Democrat leaders’ prime ministerial potential increased more among thosewho saw a Liberal Democrat broadcast during the campaign than among those who didnot. While they do not move support for the two major parties, therefore, PEBs do helpthe third party (echoing the 30-year-old findings of Blumler & McQuail, 1968). Theperennial problem for third parties in British politics is gaining media exposure. Thegovernment and the official opposition tend to monopolize news reporting, both on tele-vision and in the press. Elections are one of the few occasions where the Liberal Demo-crats are able to command anything like the media coverage enjoyed by Labour and theConservatives. PEBs seem to play an important part in raising the profile of the thirdparty. Furthermore, the Liberal Democrats find it considerably harder to raise funds thando Labour or the Conservatives. In their evidence to the Neill Committee, the LiberalDemocrats declared a 1997 income of £3.8 million. This compares to 1997 incomes of£24.1 million and £42.5 million for Labour and the Conservatives, respectively. Thishas knock-on consequences for the party’s campaign war chest. In 1997 it spent £2.3million on campaigning, compared to £14.9 million for Labour and £28.3 million forthe Conservatives. Free airtime is therefore a potentially more valuable asset to theLiberal Democrats than to the other parties. And it seems they used it effectively. Oneunusual feature of the 1997 British election was the large number of minor parties whoqualified for a PEB by virtue of the number of candidates they fielded. If our interpre-tation of our Liberal Democrat results is correct, then we might expect these otherparties to benefit too from their greater than normal exposure (there are insufficientvoters for any of these parties in the 1997 BES campaign panel to allow for a formaltest, however).

The impact of PEBs is not large, therefore, but they do have some bearing onelection outcomes in Britain. Only a brave (or foolhardy) party would forgo the oppor-tunity to make a PEB.

Notes

1. Of the 3,662 individuals who took part in the 1996 BSAS study, 1,422 took part in allthree subsequent waves (B, C, and D) of the campaign study. A further 855 took part in one ortwo subsequent waves. Just over a third (1,385), of the original BSAS respondents took no part inthe campaign study.

2. We have also repeated these analyses controlling for vote intention a year earlier, inWave A; our substantive conclusions are not affected.

3. Since we are using logistic regression, the equation coefficients are log odds ratios. Toobtain the odds, we take the exponent (or natural antilogarithm) of the relevant coefficient. Thenatural antilogarithm of 1.54 is 4.7.

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