Environment and Planning A 1999, volume 31, pages 1119-1128 The effectiveness of constituency campaign spending in Australian state elections during times of electoral volatility: the NewSouth Wales case^l988^5 ^^^^ J Forrest Department of Human Geography, Macquarie University, New South Wales 2109, Australia; e-mail: Jim.Forrest@mq.edu.au R J Johnston School of Geographical Sciences, University of Bristol, Bristol BS8 1SS, England; e-mail:RJohnston@bristol.ac.uk C J Pattie Department of Geography, University of Sheffield, Sheffield S10 2TN, England; e-mail:GPattie@sheffield.ac.uk Received 5 January 1998; in revised form 12 May 1998 Abstract. Research into the effects of electioneering at the constituency level suggests positive impacts on voters of campaign spending by one party relative to another. In much of this research, however, the political context of the elections studied is ignored or fitted into Key's category of normal or maintaining elections, where voting patterns remain relatively constant from one election to another. There are few, if any, reports of money-votes relationships associated with other types of elections. Analysis of a deviating election followed by two reinstating elections in the state of New South Wales, Australia, from 1988 to 1995 confirms the generality of postulated relationships between campaign spending and voting patterns, even allowing for some degree of underestimation associated with a misreading of voter intentions by the major parties in times of electoral volatility. Further insights into money-votes relationships are provided from particular features of Australian elections: a focus on marginal seats associated with strategic use of a public funding component of election-campaign expenditure, compulsory voting, and the use of an alternative vote or preferential voting system. Introduction The literature on the effects of election campaigning at the local level increasingly supports the view that campaign spending by parties or candidates impacts on votes gained (Green and Krasno, 1988; Johnston and Pattie, 1997; Pattie et al, 1994). Evidence for this comes from analyses both of single elections and, more recently, of election series in Canada (Palda, 1973), the United States (Grier, 1989; Jacobson, 1980; 1985; Welch, 1981), and Britain (Johnston, 1987; Pattie et al, 1995). In all this work, however, little attention has been paid to the electoral contexts of particular elections. This is potentially important because the allocation of resources, especially to campaigning in marginal seats, is largely predicated on ability to anticipate electoral trends, whether to defend a party's own marginal seats, to attack those of their opponents, or some combination of these two. In work on the context of electoral behaviour, Key (1955; see also Burnham, 1974; Campbell, 1966) argued that voting patterns show substantial continuity over time, representing the maintenance of preexisting social cleavages while allowing for a change of government through a uniform swing across the electorate. On occasion, however, elections depart from this mould to become 'deviating' or 'critical': deviating where there is only a temporary break in the former continuity usually followed by one or more 'reinstating' elections in which former social cleavages are reasserted; critical where there is a major and lasting shift in the social dynamics of voting behaviour. Much of the British work on money-votes relationships is set in the context of continuity of voting patterns—of maintaining elections, associated with a long period