Project date: 1 May 2024
Project link: https://github.com/CampaignLab/uk_elections_leaflets
Problem Addressed
Collectively, British political parties spend millions of pounds on leaflets every year. Despite their outsized role in our campaigning, our understanding of the nature and impact of political literature is still very limited, however.
This data library was established to enable research on political literature as a valuable subject of study in its own right, while also serving as a tool to analyse how campaign materials reflect the priorities and political worldviews of their creators. By examining these materials systematically, researchers can gain insights into both the nature of political communication and the strategic thinking behind it. Questions of interest might include:
How does what a political party puts in its manifesto relate to the content on voter facing material?
How can analysing the frequency with which different issues appear in literature inform us about their relative importance within broader policy agendas or politicians’ perceptions of which issues resonate most effectively with voters?
Are there systematic differences between the literature of different parties and, if so, what are they?
What is the role played by hyperlocal framing in campaigning?
ChatGPT vision has been used to begin a preliminary classification of the dataset, but we hope that the dataset will be the subject of further and more thorough analysis.
- Documentation link: https://github.com/CampaignLab/uk_elections_leaflets/blob/main/README.md
- Code repository: https://github.com/CampaignLab/uk_elections_leaflets
Contact: [email protected]
7 May 2025