One of 4 GE15 leaflets from the past 5 days – and there are 11 weeks to go. Oh the joy of living in a marginal! pic.twitter.com/ShfdYJgLau

— Mike Smithson (@MSmithsonPB) February 17, 2015

GE2010 Ipsos-MORI. Just 27% of those living in marginals realised that their seat was key battleground pic.twitter.com/YWqn0OUPiJ

— Mike Smithson (@MSmithsonPB) February 17, 2015

The above polling by Ipsos at GE10 says a lot. By the final week just over a quarter of those sampled in its marginals polling realised that that was the status of their seat.

I raise this because a prominent PBer emailed me to ask “What evidence is there that voters actually know that they are in a marginal constituency?” The answer is in the polling.

My guess is that the term “marginal” is simply not understood by most voters. But does it matter?

You know you are living in a marginal by the intensity of the campaign in your area. For those living in the 500 seats where the result is seen as a foregone conclusion will have a totally different expereince compared with those that do.

Under first past the post winning seats is paramount not building up national vote share. The marginals matter – the rest don’t.

In the constituency where I live, Bedford, the battle has been building up since the start of the year and over the past five days we’ve had four separate election communications. Heaven knows how much we’ll have got by 10pm on May 7th?

How much of this will actually get through? How much will the huge financial advantage that the Tories have matter in key seats? Billboards are going to play a big part. We are going to see a lot on Twitter and Facebook and it will be interesting to observe how social media is used.

But the one big election communication vehicle that is prohibited in the UK is paid-for TV advertising – totally unlike the US.

Mike Smithson

For 11 years viewing politics from OUTSIDE the Westminster bubble

For latest polling and political betting news follow @MSmithsonPB