Do leaflets work? Part 2
Consider the following statistic a sequel to What do the academics say? Delivering lots of leaflets works:
During the six weeks of the [2015 general] election campaign, a typical target voter would receive at least eight personalised messages from the Conservatives.
It is taken from the excellent The British General Election of 2015 by Philip Cowley and Dennis Kavanagh, who also record this about Ed Miliband’s failure as Labour leader:
According to one Shadow Cabinet member: ‘The view in Ed’s office was: “once you’ve said it once, it’s been said”. But that’s not good. You have to say it again, and again, and again’.
Repetition, including in leaflet form, is required.
This is based upon research from 2015? There has been a revolution in communication since then. Anyone under 35 years old only look on their phones for information and news. If you count the enormous effort volunteers put in having to tramp the streets what is the evidence that this is effective any more?
More recent research continues to show the same thing, and there’s been a big practical example of the continuing impact of leaflets from the May local elections this year, where there was a big variation in results in, for example, Lib Dem campaigns that did or didn’t use large volume of literature.