Local Leaflets: Constituency Issue Messaging at the 2024 General Election

Duggan, Alan; Milazzo, Caitlin; Trumm, Siim

Abstract

The 2024 General Election brought about a significant change in the parliamentary balance of power. There has already been much attention devoted to the issues that dominated the national campaign. Using original leaflet data from the OpenElections project, this study extends the focus to explore the issues emphasised in local electoral communications put forward by parties and candidates in their constituency campaigns. We find that the top issues featured in election leaflets were health, the economy, and the environment. That said, we also find evidence of considerable variation across parties in terms of the issues emphasised, as well as in the focus of the discussion within issue areas, and the kind of keywords they tended to prioritise. Our findings suggest that while political elites recognise the need to engage with the key issues of the campaign, how they engage with an issue depends on many factors, including their own record and/or the perceived shortcomings of their opponent(s).

Citation

Duggan, A., Milazzo, C., & Trumm, S. (2024). Local Leaflets: Constituency Issue Messaging at the 2024 General Election. Political Quarterly, https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-923X.13476

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Nov 15, 2024
• Online Publication Date: Nov 24, 2024
• Publication Date: Nov 24, 2024
• Deposit Date: Nov 25, 2024
• Publicly Available Date: Nov 25, 2024
• Journal: Political Quarterly
• Print ISSN: 0032-3179
• Electronic ISSN: 1467-923X
• Publisher: Wiley
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-923X.13476
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/42471130
• Publisher URL: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1467-923X.13476