Look how the industry has declined

How the circulations of national newspapers have declined since GE2010 See table pic.twitter.com/4FTguIS1Ld

— Mike Smithson (@MSmithsonPB) July 31, 2013

The ground war is going to matter much more than the air war

We spend a lot of time on PB trying to assess the impact of specific developments or stories on voting behaviour.

One factor that we should bear in mind is that the national media is in a sharp decline. For every five people that bought a daily national paper when the coalition was formed just four do so today and who knows what the above table will look like in May 2015.

Combine the falling sales with the rise of the pay wall and it’s not hard to conclude that the press is not going to be as influential as in previous times.

There’s another aspect to this: declining audiences for TV news.

Given the continued ban on TV election advertising, which I think is wrong, and the challenge facing the campaigns as they strive to get their messages over is enormous.

All this means in electioneering terms is that the ground game is going to be even more important. It becomes the prime way of getting your message across

But how are the parties with the it declining memberships going to resource that? Pushing envelopes through the doors of every residence in a 70,000+ voter constituency requires a lot of foot soldiers

Mike Smithson