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Drawing on survey data on the members of six British parties gathered in the immediate aftermath of the general election of 2015, this article asks what motivates members to engage in high-intensity election campaign activism. It argues that two factors are especially prominent: the aspiration to pursue a career in politics (which only accounts for a small minority of these activists) and becoming integrated into a local social network (which accounts for a much larger proportion). By contrast, members who lack either of these characteristics, but are mainly motivated to join by ideological impulses, largely restrict themselves to low-intensity activity. These findings are likely to be especially pertinent to countries with single-member district electoral systems.

Drawing on survey data on the members of six British parties gathered in the immediate aftermath of the general election of 2015, this article asks what motivates members to engage in high-intensity election campaign activism. It argues that two factors are especially prominent: the aspiration to pursue a career in politics (which only accounts for a small minority of these activists) and becoming integrated into a local social network (which accounts for a much larger proportion). By contrast, members who lack either of these characteristics, but are mainly motivated to join by ideological impulses, largely restrict themselves to low-intensity activity. These findings are likely to be especially pertinent to countries with single-member district electoral systems.

What makes people join a political party is one of the most commonly studied questions in research on party members. Nearly all this research, however, is based on talking to people who have actually joined parties. This article simultaneously analyses surveys of members of political parties in Britain and surveys of non-member supporters of those same parties. This uniquely enables us to model the decision to join parties. The results suggest that most of the elements that constitute the influential 'General Incentives Model' are significant. But it also reveals that, while party supporters imagine that selective benefits, social norms and opposing rival parties' policies are key factors in members' decisions to join a party, those who actually do so are more likely to say they are motivated by attachments to their party's values, policies and leaders, as well as by an altruistic desire to support democracy more generally.

Drawing on survey data on the members of six British parties gathered in the immediate aftermath of the general election of 2015, this article addresses the question of what members do for their parties during campaigns. It identifies a key distinction between traditional forms of activity and more recent forms of online campaign participation. While the well-established general incentives theory of participation continues to offer a useful basis for explaining both types of campaign activism, we find that our understanding is significantly enhanced by considering the impact of national and local political contexts. Whereas the former chiefly adds explanatory value to the model of online participation by party members, the latter considerably improves the model of offline participation.

Drawing on survey data on the members of six British parties gathered in the immediate aftermath of the general election of 2015, this article addresses the question of what members do for their parties during campaigns. It identifies a key distinction between traditional forms of activity and more recent forms of online campaign participation. While the well-established general incentives theory of participation continues to offer a useful basis for explaining both types of campaign activism, we find that our understanding is significantly enhanced by considering the impact of national and local political contexts. Whereas the former chiefly adds explanatory value to the model of online participation by party members, the latter considerably improves the model of offline participation.

A survey of ordinary members of the United Kingdom's Conservative Party carried out in 2013 revealed that nearly 30% of them would seriously consider voting for the country's radical right wing populist party (United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP)). However, we show that at the general election in 2015, only a very small proportion of them – around 5% of Tory grassroots members – actually did so, driven it seems mainly by alienation from the leadership and David Cameron in particular, as well as, perhaps, by concerns about the Conservative-led government's austerity policies. However, those party members who did eventually vote for UKIP were still much more likely to have expressed a propensity to vote for it in 2013 than those who did not. Since the Conservative Party has not experienced the same increase in membership as some of its competitors, and since members are an important part of parties' electoral campaigning, they should avoid alienating those members they do have – something of which Theresa May appears to be aware.

One of the traditional functions of party members is to campaign on behalf of their party at general elections. However, they are not the only people who volunteer for the job. In the context of the growing literature on 'multi-speed membership' parties, it is important to ask what non-members do for parties they support. This paper examines how different actors contributed to the electoral campaigns of six parties at the 2015 UK General Election, using survey data covering not only members of the Labour, Conservative, Liberal Democrat, United Kingdom Independence, Scottish Nationalist, and Green parties, but also voters who identified themselves as being close to one of those parties but did not formally belong to them. As well as exploring how much work they do during campaigns, we ask whether the two groups choose different activities and are differently motivated. We find that, at the individual level, party members do more than non-member supporters, and that this is especially true of more intensive forms of activity. We also find that constituency context and political attitudes influence levels of activity in similar ways for members and supporters. However, we find no consistent impact from demographic factors or ideological incongruence. At the aggregate level, we estimate that the campaign work done by supporters may match or even exceed that done by party members.