Contact matters: voters like to be asked personally for their support

Ed Miliband has announced that to counter the Conservative party’s financial advantage during the 2015 election campaign Labour will outnumber them in supporters out on the streets engaging with voters – and will benefit accordingly. Is that a sensible strategy? David Cutts, Ed Fieldhouse, Justin Fisher, Ron Johnston and Charles Pattie have done a lot of research into the impact of local campaigns and use data from the 2010 election to assess whether Labour’s strategy will bring the hoped-for benefits.