Getting it Right When it Counts : Constituency Competition and Voters’ Perceptions of British Party Positions

The spatial model of electoral competition emphasizes the role issues play in the electoral decision-making. Unfortunately, the informational requirements associated with a policy-based choice can be quite rigorous. In this paper, I argue that the political environment, in the form of constituency competition (or marginality), can improve the ability of citizens to acquire political knowledge. Constituency marginality increases the amount of campaign attention a constituency's voters receive, and therefore influences the amount of information citizens have regarding the policy positions of the parties competing in their constituency. I evaluate this argument using data from the 2005 British Election Study, and find that citizens residing in marginal constituencies are, in fact, more likely than their counterparts in safe constituencies to perceive the parties' relative ideological positions correctly