The Electoral Relevance of Local Party Organizations

John P. Frendreis, James L. Gibson and Laura L. Vertz

American Political Science Review, 1990, vol. 84, issue 1, 225-235

Abstract: We examine the role that one group of party units—county party organizations—play in electoral politics, based on electoral and county party organizational data collected during 1980–84. Local party chairs report their organizations are involved in a number of electorally relevant activities, including candidate recruitment, joint planning with candidate organizations, and various independent campaign activities. The data demonstrate that county party organizations are indeed effective. The probability of a minority party's running candidates for lower-level offices, which appears to contribute to higher vote totals for higher-level offices, is a function of the local strength and activity level of the party; whereas direct effects are seen to be small. These data suggest that even if mainly at the candidate recruitment stage of the process, party organizations play an important role in local electoral politics.

Date: 1990
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/ ... type/journal_article link to article abstract page (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cup:apsrev:v:84:y:1990:i:01:p:225-235_19

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in American Political Science Review from Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press, UPH, Shaftesbury Road, Cambridge CB2 8BS UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Kirk Stebbing ().