ElectionLeaflets.org

The Straight Choice is an real-time election leaflet project.

Our ambition is to create a live visualization of the flood of party political leaflets as they are delivered across the country during an election campaign.

If you have recently received any election leaflets through your door you can help by photographing or scanning them and uploading the images to our server.

Election leaflets matter

Election leaflets are one of the main weapons in the fight for votes in the UK. They are targeted, effective and sometimes very bitter.

Most voters, who live in safe local authority wards or parliamentary constituencies, receive just one or two leaflets from each party in the course of an election campaign and they’re often ignored.

But in the places where the parties do battle (particularly in a close by-election) households can receive dozens of leaflets per week attacking and delivering rebuttals to attacks on each of the leading candidates as the parties fight for every last vote that can swing the election.

The battles are chosen strategically, constrained by the limited resources of the parties and the concentration of activists on the ground. They can often target a particular candidate where there are known political weaknesses that can be exploited through leafleting.

Most of us don’t get to see these battles, but we all feel the effects when the entire government in power is chosen by the swing of a small number floating voters in marginal constituencies on the basis of a hot local issue that is all but forgotten once the election is in the bag.

If you have a camera or a scanner, and a mailbox that receives party election leaflets, you can be part of the project that helps us to finally map out an entire election campaign in real time.

There will be a prize for the person who spots the most masterfully deceptive leaflet in the country, so don’t throw anything away as we will require hard evidence that it exists once the winner is selected.

For news, opinions and other gossip, check The Straight Choice blog.

Related projects

There are several library archives that have been collecting election leaflets over the decades. Unfortunately, they don’t give time and place or show the battles as they happen. Please check them out to see what election leaflets are like.

• By-elections archives for the UK: http://www.geocities.com/by_elections/index.html
• Scottish elections digital archive: http://gdl.cdlr.strath.ac.uk/aspect/index.html
• Wales election leaflets: http://www.llgc.org.uk/ymgyrchu/WPA-Ephemera/index.htm
• Ireland election posters: http://electionsireland.org/images/posters/2002general/