the growth of the mass media which has distorted election campaigns to disproportionately focus on the national campaign; as Dever et al states, the national campaign ‘impinges most persisten tly and directly on their (the voters) consciousness as it is played out before their eyes’. 221 On the other hand through the examples of the 1992 and 2010 British general elections, it may be argued that the ground campaign may still have a vital role to play in Britain as a result of dealignment within the electorate weakening party loyalties, thus influencing the parties into professionalising their campaign strategy in order to balance the focus on the national campaign with a personalised constituency ground campaign; as McKenna and Han write ‘the campaigns of the future..should..be about people’ 222
221 Denver et al. p.180 222 McKenna, E., & Han, H. (2014). Groundbreakers: How Obama’s 2.2 million volunteers transformed campaigning in America. New York: Oxford University Press. p.viii
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