A report on the 2005 general election said that the concentration of campaign activity in marginal seats had a significant impact on public engagement with the campaigns. There was also reduced amount of media coverage compared to 2001.
Source: Election 2005: Engaging the public in Great Britain, Electoral Commission (020 7271 0500)
Links: Report | Electoral Commission press release
Date: 2005-Dec
A report called on all political parties to use equality guarantees to ensure parity of representation for women in Parliament.
Source: Sarah Childs, Joni Lovenduski and Rosie Campbell, Women at the Top 2005: Changing numbers, changing politics?, Hansard Society (020 7955 7459)
Links: Report | Hansard Society press release
Date: 2005-Nov
A report reviewed election literature used during the 2005 General Election. Doorstep/telephone contact was extremely low: only 2 in 5 respondents were contacted in this way. In marginal seats negative campaigning was more prevalent, although there was generally more positive than negative campaigning overall. At least in terms of literature, the assertion that the Conservatives concentrated on immigration/asylum was unfounded. The Liberal Democrats were the least 'local' party: both Labour and the Conservatives had more localized content in their literature.
Source: Justin Fisher, General Election 2005 - A Voter's Eye View, New Politics Network (020 7278 4443)
Links: Findings (pdf) | NPN press release
Date: 2005-Jul
A new book (by a group of Conservative Party politicians) analyzed the Conservative Party performance in the 2005 General Election. It presented a series of policy ideas on health, education, crime, local government, and constitutional reform - based on the common theme of devolving power to individuals and local communities.
Source: Douglas Carswell MP et al., Direct Democracy: An agenda for a new model party, Direct Democracy, available from Telegraph Books (0870 161 3344)
Links: Summary | Guardian report
Date: 2005-Jun
A think-tank pamphlet said that negative campaigning risked undermining the political system.
Source: Meg Russell, Must Politics Disappoint?, Fabian Society (020 7227 4900)
Links: Summary
Date: 2005-Mar
A paper examined the relationship between class, race and party identification using data from the 1997 British Election Study. Although social class did have an impact on the party identification of ethnic minorities, the effect was weaker than among white respondents and did not appear to be transmitted as strongly via class identification or left-right ideology, while ethnicity was related to party identification independently of class. However, although certain mainstream political issues appeared to be less closely related to party identification among ethnic minorities, it did not appear that ethnicity specific issues had any particular influence.
Source: Maria Sobolewska, Ethnicity as political cleavage: social bases of party identity and relevance of political attitudes, Working 107, Centre for Research into Elections and Social Trends, available from University of Strathclyde (0141 552 4400)
Links: Paper (pdf) | Abstract
Date: 2005-Feb