The Campaign As Experienced by the Voters in the Battleground Seats

Abstract

This chapter explores the election campaign from the point of view of the voters in some of the key Labour-Conservative battleground constituencies, where the eventual outcome of the election was likely to be decided and where we might expect the election to have been hardest fought. We consider the potential importance of the campaign here (as measured by the size of the floating vote), how many people the campaign reached and what those on the receiving end thought of it. We also look at how far the voters here were aware that they were in strategically important constituencies, how many claimed to be voting tactically, and how far these decisions seem to have been well informed and well judged. Finally we consider the impact of the leaders’ debates — here, as elsewhere, an influential factor, despite Nick Clegg’s performance being arguably an irrelevance in these constituencies that his party had no chance of winning.