Have the Tories gone on the defensive and narrowed the focus of their constituency targets? Donations to local parties in 2014.

It is widely expected that the Conservatives will outspend their opponents in the election campaign, including the amounts spent on individual constituency contests. But which of their local parties are attracting most in donations? Analyses of recently-released data on donations for the whole of 2014 by Ron Johnston, Charles Pattie and David Cutts suggest that the Tories narrowed their focus to ensure that they retained control of the marginal seats they won in 2010 and attracted much less for their campaigns to win marginal seats held by the Liberal Democrats and Labour – a strategy that clearly contrasted with Labour’s goal of increasing its number of MPs.