'Online election campaigns not replacing leaflets'

Online and digital campaigning has not replaced leaflet drops and knocking on doors during local elections, according to a university lecturer.

Dr Mark Goodwin, lecturer in politics at Coventry University, said door-knocking and sharing via the letterbox may feel a bit "old-fashioned" but it was still the most effective way to reach voters.

But he conceded the internet had changed campaigning and was being used to better target political messages.

All 54 seats on Coventry City Council are up for election for the first time in two decades, as residents heads to the polls on 7 May.

Goodwin said studies in the 1960s had found local campaigning did not have as much of an impact as national campaigning, but more up-to-date research found that local efforts had "small but real effects on outcomes".

"The nature of British politics is you only need to win by one vote," he explained.

"So if you've got a close seat, it's worth it to invest some resource into trying to improve your turnout or your vote by even a percentage point or two, which is what traditional election methods or campaigning methods are thought to be worth."

Goodwin added leaflets were about encouraging others to turn out and "mobilising people who might be inclined to vote for you".

He told BBC CWR: "The digital methods, what they are principally used for is profiling, targeting, voter identification [and] building up databases of people."

Responding to whether paper leaflets were here to stay, Goodwin added that despite the digital world, evidence suggested traditional methods still had the most impact.

"There's a lot of discussion about social media but the evidence is not there to say that it's more effective in doing the things that traditional campaign methods do," he added.

"So as long as that's the case you can expect that way of campaigning is going to continue."

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