I’d say there’s a fair fight locally but with a variety of approaches. The Lib Dem candidate has put a lot of personal effort into online campaigning, which seems like the most cost-effective way to reach the maximum number of voters. Martin Linton has also ramped up his blogging and twittering, and Twitter is the only reason I’ve know anything about where campaigners will be and how to hear them speak. If leaflets also mentioned upcoming campaign events, especially Hustings, then they’d be more justified.

The best of my Conservative leaflets listed the local councillors, which is where the real battle-less election is – there’s almost no info on these, and I’m concerned that most people (excluding those who read this blog!) don’t know what they are, how they vote, or what they’re voting for. Or maybe the other parties do think it’s a waste of money in Shaftesbury to campaign, but that seems like a shame.

A small proportion of people do vote on the basis of who they think has been hardest working. And there are a significant proportion who complain that we “only ever come during elections” (which is not true).

However, keeping in touch with the electorate is a key part of being a councillor (or any elected representative) and doing that through a political party a way of doing that. The leaflets reflect, to a degree, the manifestos of the parties and give an indication of the work that the candidates have been doing. They are not spam.

But surely it’s more about the manifesto of each party compared to who puts effort into spamming people?

Can some people really be swayed to vote a certain way, because distributing pamphlets in a borough somehow represents how much effort the party will put in once they get into power?