The ‘ground war’ is the election campaign at the local level, and it seldom gets the same coverage as the ‘air war’ – or the media campaign at the national level. This is because it is difficult to know what is going on in individual constituencies across the country.
The British Election Study currently has a large-scale pre-election survey in the field which asks people if they have been contacted by one or more of the political parties in the last six months. Such contacts could take the form of canvassing, telephoning, leafleting, emailing, or messages via social network sites like Facebook and Twitter, the most common form being leafleting. This provides a measure of the ground war so far.
The survey shows that about a quarter of the electorate have been contacted since July 2009, and the chart shows the percentages contacted by the different political parties. It is apparent that the Conservatives are way ahead of their rivals in contacting the voters, reflecting in part the effects of the funding provided by Lord Ashcroft. Even more interesting is that the Liberal Democrats came second in the list with a contact rate of 46 per cent, and Labour came a poor third by contacting only 35 per cent.
The activities of minor parties are also interesting, and it is clear that the BNP has done more contacting than Ukip (one of its key rivals), and the Greens have not done very well at all, with a contact rate of only three per cent. We know from research that such contacts have positive electoral effects, making this type of activity a vital part of the overall effort to win votes.
