Local Leaflets: Constituency Issue Messaging at the 2024 General Election

The 2024 General Election redrew the map of British politics yet again. In addition to a Labour majority showcasing significant gains in England, Scotland and Wales, the Liberal Democrats and the Greens picked up new seats across the country, while Reform UK returned five MPs. We explore the messaging employed in the local campaigns, focussing on the most common form of campaign communication in British general elections: the leaflet. Analysis of more than 1,600 election leaflets from all the mainstream parties showcases the issues that were emphasised, as well as how different issues were discussed.

Understanding local issue emphasis

Opinion polls in the run-up to the election showed that the most important issues facing the country were the economy, health and immigration, followed by housing, crime and the environment. We focus on these areas plus the salient issues of defence, education, Europe/Brexit, Gaza/Ukraine, social welfare and transport to obtain a comprehensive picture of what parties and candidates talked about in the run-up to polling day.

Figure 1 displays the percentage of leaflets that included at least one mention of the given issue area. The top three issues discussed were health (84.1 per cent), the economy (68.8 per cent) and the environment (56.3 per cent). The discussion of issues by parties are shown in Figure 2 below. Health stands out as one of the top three issues for every party. Next, the economy featured heavily in Labour Party leaflets (75 per cent) as well as those of the Conservative Party (83.4 per cent), the Liberal Democrats (76.1 per cent) and the national parties (77.8 per cent), but somewhat surprisingly was mentioned only in a minority of Green Party and Reform UK leaflets (41.7 per cent and 29.7 per cent, respectively). Instead, the most mentioned issue in Green Party leaflets was the environment (82.2 per cent) and in Reform UK leaflets was immigration (95.1 per cent). This reinforces the idea that niche parties in Britain can—and do—try to associate themselves with issue areas that might not dominate the discourse of their mainstream counterparts.

Health

The methodology employed in this article also sheds light on how issues were discussed. Starting with health, the most popular keywords pertaining to health were ‘NHS’ and ‘doctor/GP’; nearly three quarters of leaflets that talked about health did so by including a reference to ‘NHS’ (74.5 per cent), while over half of such leaflets made a reference to either ‘doctor’ or ‘GP’ (56.5 per cent). A substantial minority of such leaflets also talk about health in terms of ‘healthcare’ (45.6 per cent) and ‘waiting lists/times’ (40.4 per cent).

Focussing first on Conservative Party and Labour Party leaflets, note that the most frequent health-related mention in Conservative Party leaflets—‘hospital’—did not even make it to the top five for the Labour Party. At the same time, the second most common health-related keyword in Labour Party leaflets—‘waiting lists/times’—did not make it to the top five for the Conservative Party. This makes sense given that the Conservative Party was very keen to emphasise future investment in health, rather than engaging with their record on the NHS.

With regards to other parties, ‘NHS’ stands out as the most common health-related keyword for the Liberal Democrats, the Green Party and the national parties. It is the Reform UK leaflets that are slight outliers here. Fewer than a quarter of their leaflets that included a health-related mention did so by referring to the ‘NHS’ (23.5 per cent). Instead, it was common for those leaflets to reference ‘waiting lists/times’ (93.4 per cent) and ‘doctor/GP’ (78.3 per cent). While health was a prominent feature in the leaflets of all parties, there is—unsurprisingly—considerable variation in the choice of keywords that different parties used to discuss this issue.

Economy

For economy, the narratives put forward by most parties tended to narrowly focus on specific keywords. While Conservative Party and Reform UK leaflets were more likely to talk about ‘tax’ than anything else—with 87.8 per cent and 90.9 per cent of their economy-related leaflets including such a mention, respectively—the dominant reference in Labour Party leaflets was ‘economy’ (86.7 per cent). This reflects the desire of the right-wing parties to capitalise on fears regarding higher rates of tax in the future and/or a desire to signal a commitment to tax cuts. There also appears to be a government versus opposition divide. While Conservative Party leaflets do not feature ‘cost of living’ as a popular economy-related term, it is unsurprisingly among the top five for all other parties, who were keen to challenge the Conservatives on an issue where they are traditionally perceived to have an advantage.

Insights

There are three key insights arising from this study. First, these findings highlight the rich variation present in British general election campaigns. Studying election leaflets provides important insights that are not always evident from looking only at the national campaign. Indeed, there are still further insights to be gained from exploring the variation across constituencies, as candidates undoubtedly take their local context into account when determining the issues they wish to discuss.

Second, the findings highlight that parties recognise they must engage with voters’ priorities even where their traditional competence is perceived to be poor. The Conservative Party and its candidates did not shy away from addressing voters’ key priorities like the economy and health, but they sought to emphasise future investment or fears about future changes. Equally, the Labour Party recognised the need to engage with voters on immigration, even though it is not a traditional area of issue ownership for the party.

Finally, by studying election leaflets, important insights are gained into how niche parties can exploit gaps in the electoral arena by focussing on different issues to mainstream parties. In so doing, they create a space for themselves in the electoral market which can lead to success.