Drawing on campaign ethnographies conducted by the authors across the North West, South East, and South West of England during the 2024 UK General Election, This paper examines personalised campaigning through the lens of local and national identities. The aim of the ‘campaign ethnographies’ was to explore how women parliamentary candidates of different political parties experienced election campaigns, with a focus upon how they navigate everyday moments of sexism. We observed 15 women candidates at public meetings, community visits, campaign events, election hustings, and party conferences, and spoke with party members and supporters during our everyday interactions on the campaign trail and through in-depth ethnographic interviews. Our fieldwork revealed that “localism” became strategically deployed in campaigns for women and intersected with other “personalisms” such as motherhood.
In the context of the UK’s first past the post system, where “all politics is local,” female candidates frequently mobilise local identities—community engagement, motherhood, or professional ties—as sources of authenticity and connection. Yet, these same identities often limit women’s perceived legitimacy for national leadership roles, reflecting entrenched cultural scripts about “appropriate” femininity in public life. While major parties, notably Labour through its all-women shortlists, have attempted to redress representational gaps, women continue to confront everyday sexism and selective valuation of “local” experience. Drawing on our extensive fieldnotes and in-depth interviews, we explore how women navigate local and national identities during campaigns, in interactions with voters, party activists and the media.
