A thread about the art of election freeposts and secret insights they offer. What’s a freepost? It’s a leaflet delivery offered to every candidate in national elections. A great way to identify how seriously a party takes a seat and data quality. But only if you know your stuff..

In the UK every candidate is given the free delivery of one item to every elector in their constituency. Note every elector not every household. This is (broadly) a good thing as it means every candidate has the opportunity to tell every elector what they stand for.

Delivery’s done by Royal Mail. Posties are the best. Unlike other paid delivery they're limited in commercial stuff they take, post it with other items people tent to look at and get it to every house. You don’t end up between kebab and pizza menus or blowing down the street.

For tired campaign teams this is, in essence, the extra opportunity to get a leaflet to every elector without paying. It is like a GIFT from santa. Paid delivery’s too expensive to do in an election with tight expenditure limits. So why can you tell loads from them?

First - spotting a freepost. They are governed by certain rules (size, weight, content etc) to help the post office cope and keep things fair. You can spot them because they will have ELECTION COMMUNICATION written on. Here’s an example from Basingstoke https://electionleaflets.org/leaflets/15378/ 

There are two types of freepost. Addressed/unaddressed. Addressed freepost will be (duh!) addressed and targeted to individuals. Typically every elector gets one, though that isn’t always the case. Here’s an example of an addressed one from Cardiff North https://electionleaflets.org/leaflets/14850/ 

Here’s the clever bits election watchers. Parties still need to pay to get these printed, bundled (the rules are also specific on this) and delivered to the sorting depot. This can be expensive and effortful. The big parties now outsurce a lot of this.

Look again at the Cardiff North/Basingstoke leaflets. Same template design, different content - being a Welsh seat, Cardiff's leaflet has some Welsh on it. This tells you that the party (tories) probably have someone designing this centrally, but with the flex to change it.

It also tells you that they have bothered to do this. So the seat is likely to be marginal with a campaign team who is (at least) someway on it. Spoiler: the tories lost Cardiff North at this election.

An unaddressed freepost tells you the party isn’t spending lots of money and don’t think result will be marginal (for them). This can mean they are in a distant third or fourth, OR it can mean they are very confident of victory and scarce resources are spent elsewhere.

A candidate in play in a marginal seat doing an unaddressed freepost. ALARM bells should ring about the quality of their campaign

The cleer bit: addressed freeposts go to every elector. You can split them - different wards, genders, voting intention etc. Imagine you've been canvassed and told labour you aren’t certain if you will vote for them. Then get a different message to your ardent Tory flatmate

This tells you you’re in a seat with a smart labour campaign team on top of their data. If however you are a woman called Ali and get sent the same addressed freepost about testicular cancer campaigns as your husband. You might think they tagged you as a man. ALARM bell.

Women, of course, can care about testicular cancer too, so there is an art in doing the content so people don’t know they are being targeted. None the less every election something like this will happen and a campaigner will have to try and patiently explain what’s gone on.

Splits are harder to get right in volatile election periods and where people move a lot. Historic data just isn’t as valuable, or existent. There are only so many slots the post office can offer people (think about the poor posties!) so competition for the best days is intense.