Controlling for district magnitude, party characteristics and election effects, we find that the major Spanish parties-PP and PSOE-mobilise districts where they are more likely to win a new seat or are in danger of losing one they already hold. As a determinant of campaign intensity, the predicted closeness of the district race is more relevant in the smallest districts. We also find that Spanish parties mobilise their strongholds, an effect as important as the closeness of the district race. We suggest that in the mobilisation choices made by Spanish party elites political finance motivations might play a role.

This paper studies changes in voting preferences over election campaigns. Building on the literature on spatial models and valence issues, we study whether 1) ideological distance to political parties, 2) assessments of partiesÕ competence to handle different policy issues, and 3) votersÕ updating of candidatesÕ evaluations are factors that explain shifts in votersÕ choice in the weeks preceding the election. To test our hypotheses we use data from three survey panels conducted for the 2008, 2011 and 2015 Spanish general elections. Our findings show that valence factors are more influential than ideological indifference to account for campaign conversion.

The literature on strategic voting has provided evidence that some electors support large parties at the voting booth to avoid wasting their vote on a preferred but uncompetitive smaller party. In this paper we argue that district conditions also elicit reactions from abstainers and other party voters. We find that, when ballot gains and losses from different types of responses to the constituency conditions are taken into account, large parties still benefit moderately from strategic behaviour, while small parties obtain substantial net ballot losses. This result stems from a model that allows for abstention in the choice set of voters, and uses counterfactual simulation to estimate the incidence of district conditions in the Spanish general elections of 2000 and 2008.

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