The concept of a neighbourhood effect within British voting patterns has largely been discarded, because no data have been available for testing it at the appropriate spatial scales. To undertake such tests, bespoke neighbourhoods have been created around the home of each respondent to the 1997 British Election Study survey in England and Wales, and small-area census data have been assembled for these to depict the socio-economic characteristics of voters' local contexts. Analyses of voting in these small areas, divided into five equal-sized status areas, provides very strong evidence that members of each social class were much more likely to vote Labour than Conservative in the low-status than in the high-status areas. This is entirely consistent with the concept of the neighbourhood effect, but alternative explanations are feasible. The data provide very strong evidence of micro-geographical variations in voting patterns, for which further research is necessary to identify the processes involved.The class cleavage within the British electorate has been waning for over four decades, since Crewe and his colleagues first charted its onset: 1 its death notice was posted by Sanders in 1997. 2 In place of the once enduring relationship between class and voting, studies of recent British general elections, and also of inter-election voting intentions, have focused on economic voting modelswith considerable success. In this article, we return to the class cleavage, but do so by looking at it in a spatially disaggregated way, taking up ideas suggested by Miller in the 1970s. 3 We show that micro-scale patterns of voting at the 1997 general election in England and Wales are entirely consistent with the now * Iain MacAllister is in the

Constituency (local) campaigning in British general elections has been transformed over the last ten years or so. Firstly, national party headquarters have taken an increasingly large role in planning and managing constituency campaigns. Although the pace of change has varied across the major parties, all are heading down the same road. Secondly, campaigning on the ground has also changed. Technological and other changes have led to a decline in the use of traditional campaign techniques and increased use of new methods, especially in 'key' seats.These developments are charted using data derived from a unique set of nation-wide surveys of election agents at the last three general elections. Finally, the paper returns (briefly) to the debate about the electoral effects of constituency campaigning, presenting data relating to its impact in each of the three elections concerned.

Political parties maintain local organisations and recruit members mainly to fight elections. For most of the post‐war period, however, the dominant view among analysts has been that constituency campaigning in British general elections has little or no effect on election outcomes. This view has been challenged over the last ten years or so. Evidence derived from post‐election surveys of constituency election agents following the 1992, 1997 and 2001 general elections is used here to show that the intensity of constituency campaigning significantly affects turnout levels and, for Labour and the Liberal Democrats, levels of party support. There is also some evidence that Conservative campaigning affected constituency variations in the party's performance in 2001. The conclusions reached on the basis of aggregate‐level analysis are supported by analysis of individual‐level data derived from British Election Study surveys. The effects of campaigning are not large, but they are clear and significant – and sufficient to affect the numbers of seats won by the major parties. In the light of this, parties have good reasons to maintain healthy local organisations.

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