When Campaigns Can Backfire: National Identities and Support for Parties in the 2015 U.K. General Election in Scotland

Published date01 December 2018
DOI10.1177/1065912918771529
Date01 December 2018
AuthorDavide Morisi
Subject MatterArticles
https://doi.org/10.1177/1065912918771529
Political Research Quarterly
2018, Vol. 71(4) 895 –909
© 2018 University of Utah
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DOI: 10.1177/1065912918771529
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Article
In election campaigns, political parties compete on
numerous, contentious issues. Although the classic,
Downsian approach assumes that parties would position
themselves close to the preferences of the median voter
(Downs 1957), other prominent accounts of electoral
competition argue that parties compete by selectively
emphasizing the issues on which they have an advantage
(e.g., Budge and Farlie 1983; De Sio and Weber 2014;
Green and Hobolt 2008; Petrocik 1996; Petrocik, Benoit,
and Hansen 2003). Common to these approaches is the
assumption that parties avoid campaigning on issues that
are internally divisive or that divide their supporters. Yet,
this strategy might not always be viable, especially dur-
ing high-stake elections in which intense competition can
bring contentious issues to the center stage. When parties
attack each other on cross-cutting topics, how do voters
react? Do they stick to their preferred party’s positions, or
do they rather shift support toward other parties?
Despite extensive research on campaign strategies and
recent studies on negative campaigning in multiparty sys-
tems (Nai and Walter 2015a), our knowledge of campaign
effects in relation to issues that cut across party lines is
limited. Examples of such issues include not only dis-
putes over national independence in Catalonia (Rico and
Liñeira 2014), Scotland (Johns et al. 2009), and Quebec
(Clarke 1983; Nadeau, Martin, and Blais 1999), but also
environmental (Carter 2006) and European Union (EU)
integration issues (Green 2007) in the United Kingdom or
ethical and socioeconomic issues in the United States
(Abramowitz 1995; Baldassarri and Gelman 2008).
This study argues that when parties compete on cross-
cutting issues, they might activate voters’ sense of “iden-
tification” with these issues and either gain or lose
electoral support, depending on the stance taken by both
voters and parties on these topics. Consider, for example,
the case of two voters A and B both holding the same
opinion on the issue of gay rights and both sharing party
C’s stance on this issue. If party C decides to attack
another party D on gay rights, party C might reinforce
voters A and B’s identification with this specific issue and
ultimately gain electoral support. On the contrary, imag-
ine a scenario in which both voters A and B support party
771529PRQXXX10.1177/1065912918771529Political Research QuarterlyMorisi
research-article2018
1University of Vienna, Austria
Corresponding Author:
Davide Morisi, Department of Government, University of Vienna,
Rathausstraße 19/9, Vienna 1010, Austria.
Email: davide.morisi@univie.ac.at
When Campaigns Can Backfire:
National Identities and Support for
Parties in the 2015 U.K. General
Election in Scotland
Davide Morisi1
Abstract
Research on campaign strategies generally assumes that political parties avoid campaigning on issues that are internally
divisive. However, this strategy might not always be viable, especially when parties attack each other in high-stake
elections. This article provides novel evidence on the effects of campaigning on cross-cutting issues by focusing on
the 2015 U.K. general election in Scotland. Results based on an experiment and a nationally representative survey
show that the strategy to criticize the Scottish National Party (SNP) with regard to the cross-cutting issue of Scottish
independence polarized voters along national identity lines. Among British voters, attack statements and perceived
negativity increased support for some of the parties sponsoring the attacks, whereas among Scottish voters they
actually increased support for the target of the attacks. In addition, experimental results indicate that attack statements
affected mainly ideologically close parties (the Labour Party and the SNP). At the theoretical level, these findings
indicate that the strategy to attack opposite parties on divisive issues can lead to both electoral gains and losses
depending on voters’ “identification” with such issues.
Keywords
voting behavior, multiparty systems, national identity, negative campaigning, U.K. elections

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