multiple audiences in order to succeed in attracting both party identifiers and dealigned voters to achieve electoral success; Dean and Croft make a reference to Schumpeter’s view of the all -importance of image in party politics and contend that electoral campaigning is intrinsically linked to party image. 218 Thus this suggests that Blair, through Labour’s election campaign, placed an emphasis on creating a positive media image for the Labour ‘brand’ rather than engaging in local ground campaigns. Fisher and Denver, in their study of ground campaigning in Britain, noted a marked drop in ground campaigning techniques used by Labour under Blair’s leadership, with a mean index score of 116 in the 1992 general election when the party was led by Neil Kinnock, compared to 97 in the 2005 election under Blair. Thus this conveys the argument that the ground campaign is not relevant in post-modern campaigning as a result of the dominance of the national campaign in the mass media leading to an emphasis on national party image in order to attract voters in the centre ground, 219 resulting in the ground campaign becoming a less influential aspect of the political campaign; Horton and Wohl cited in Johnson-Cartee and Copeland put forward a theory that suggests that the voter now experiences a ‘para - social’ interaction with politics in that the voter feels that they have participated in the political process through the media rather than through direct contact with the system, such as through door to door canvassers. 220 To conclude it can be seen that despite the evolution of political campaigns to incorporate technological advances and changes in voter behaviour, a constant aspect of campaigns has been the ground campaign. It has been argued that in the post-modern campaign era, the ground campaign has become obsolete as a result of 218 Dean & Croft, p.1200 219 Fisher, J., & Denver, D. (2009). Evaluating the electoral effects of traditional and modern modes of constituency campaigning in Britain 1992- 2005. Parliamentary Affairs, 62 (2), p.199 220 Johnson-Cartee and Copeland. p.8
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