WRITTEN ON May 5th, 2010 BY chris AND STORED IN Leaflet Distribution

2010 will probably be remembered as the first social media election in Britain, but it shouldn’t be forgotten that it has also been the umpteenth leafleting election.

We’ve written before about the importance of leaflet distributions in political campaigning, and why this advertising channel is so well-suited to constituency communications.

But our argument was never more succintly made than by this new website, which over the past few weeks has sought - very successfully, I might add - to map leafleting activity by constituency. Something of a collision of social and traditional media, you might say, and the results make for fascinating reading.

For instance, all three of the main parties seem to have been extremely active leaflet distributors in Oxford and Cambridge. The constituencies of Cambridge and South Cambridgeshire have received the most Conservative leaflets, while Labour have delivered most to Oxford East and Cambridge. The Lib Dems haven’t held back in the university towns either, with Cambridge and Oxford East both high up their leafleting league table too.

It’s easy to see why Oxford East is being so targeted - there were only a few hundred votes between Labour and the Lib Dems in 2005 - but Cambridge is one of the safest Lib Dem seats in the country. It would be interesting to know why this seat is evidently being so fiercely contested.

In terms of leaflet subject matter, the economy has dominated for both Labour and the Conservatives, while the Lib Dems have concentrated mostly on local issues.

Those with an interest in the idiosyncrasies of British democracy can have a field day on this site - take a look at the full list of parties out distributing leaflets. If the top three don’t fit the bill, perhaps you live in a seat where the Best of a Bad Bunch party are running, or even the Dungeons Death and Taxes Party, The Grumpy Old Men Political Party or Pirate Party UK. Then again, there’s always the Movement for Active Democracy (MAD)!

Coming back to the point, it’s clear that the leaflet distribution is alive and well in British politics. No other form of advertising is as good at getting important information into the hands of the majority. No other channel is better suited to targeting on a precise constituency-by-constituency basis, where one leaflet accidentally delivered the wrong side of the boundary is completely useless.

It’s my belief that whoever wins tomorrow, the leaflet distribution will continue to play a central role in elections for decades to come.

Happy voting!