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I dont think it will make much difference, the age of door knocking, placards in houses and leaflet dropping, fighting for superiority amongst the pizza and chinese takeaway flyers influencing elections is long past, the impact of the TV debate showed that.

If people want to know about their local candidate before making a decision they will simply 'google it' and check them out.

Talk about 20:20 hindsight. A week ago Michael would have been writing how mad the Libs were if they had been targeting Bournemouth West rather than defending seats like Mid-Dorset which were under threat from the pro-Tory swing since 2005. The Libs may not be a super tanker but it takes more than 72 hours to switch resourcing priorities PLUS it is still uncertain how lasting the Clegg bounce is going to be. Let's try a little more insightful commentary and analysis shall we?

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39. At 7:00pm on 19 Apr 2010, jauntycyclist wrote:
milliband said '“The 2010 election is not about Iraq,'....




oh yes it is. and Afghanistan.

the lib dem were against the war. which party is now in third place?

Crick

What would you like your journalistic legacy to be?

...or more importantly, what would do you think your mother would like your legacy to be?

To expose the Westminster lie...perhaps?

1 Jericoa

You may be right, but the effect of the debate in the blogosphere and electronic media: social networking sites etc may also be as influential, at least for those who have access to technology in the home.

It also remains to be seen how effective the Ashcroft £millions may transpire to be, too.

As a resident of the Bournemouth West constituency, I can perhaps shed a little light on why the Lib Dems have no chance here in the coming election...

Under Lib Dem control, the local council made some disastrous and truly bizarre spending commitments – they built an eyesore of a building on a prime site by the beach, which has sat empty for several years and was once voted Britain's worst building; they committed the town to building a £3.5million surf reef off the coast, (basically a pile of sand bags dumped out to sea), which haven't produced a single surfable wave, wasting all this money; then, on the day of the last local election (when they were widely expected to be kicked off the council) they signed a contract with a developer (with extortionately expensive break clauses) to build a huge casino in the heart of the town – something that was massively unpopular, and cost the incoming Conservative council a lot of money to cancel.

Basically, there was a feeling that the Lib Dems were in it for themselves – allegations of corruption were rife, and it was widely believed that many of the decisions they took (all of which were to the detriment of the town) were taken in order to line their own pockets.

It'll be a long time before the Liberal Democrats are trusted in this town again, and I'm sure they know it - which is why, perhaps, they've all but given up campaigning here.

This shows how one of the LibDems' great strengths is also a weakness - their willingness and ability to concentrate their ground troops for maximum effect.

They have no experience of campaigning broadly. While they put up candidates everywhere, they usually concentrate their efforts on a very small proportion of these constituencies. They don't have the wherewithall to step this up to broad campaigning.

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If the Lib Dems want to get elected in Bournemouth, they should put some effort into the student vote, not many students vote, but there are 2000 odd first year students, in 4 buildings, all of which wouldnt want to pay there final year fees!

Campaigning in marginals may be the name of the game at present, but this has to change. My vote (in a very safe seat) should count just as much any other vote anywhere in the country. At the same time I shouldn’t have to vote for a party I don’t want to form the Government in order to elect the best person to represent me and the constituency (or vice versa).

It is clear to most people who haven't lost interest that we need electoral reform and also we need to clean up politics.

We need an end to wasted votes, safe seats, campaign by marginal constituency and tactical voting. Looking a bit deeper, we need to shift power from the Government, to the Parliament. The fact is we need higher calibre MPs who are more independently minded. We need MPs who are elected on their personal merits, not just because they have the right party label.

One of the reasons our electoral system is rotten is that we are forced to ignore the qualities of the individual candidates and focus on voting for the party. It is not that we have forgotten the Expenses Scandal, It is just that the Electoral system doesn't allow us any freedom to do anything about it.
When you vote for a constituency representative on the basis of party label alone, you will get some lazy, incompetent, even corrupt MPs.
You also get MPs who hesitate to vote except in accordance with the wishes of the party whip.

Whatever Government we get from this unpredictable election must tackle electoral and parliamentary reform. We need an electoral system where MPs are elected on their own merits and thus can be more independent minded.
We need an electoral system where everybody can vote for the party of their choice and know that their vote will not be wasted.
We need a system which would allow voters to vote directly both for the best party and for the best constituency representative.

The only system that can do this is Direct Party and Representative voting.

The lack of ability to capitalise on the 'surge' is seen here in Ilford South too.
Although the incumbent Labour MP has a sizeable majority, the LibDems have made a sizeable gain in overall voter share in the last 2 elections. They were a very close 3rd to a Tory 2nd in the last election and the incumbent Labour MP is deeply unpopular with an increased Muslim voting population for his stance on Iraq, Terrorism Laws, etc. But our 'local' LibDem, candidate is too busy campaigning to keep her council seat in Southwark to actually try and talk to any voters in Ilford.

I think that what is happening in the polls is a very big challenge for the media as well as the political parties.

The general electorate is now very well versed in reality TV voting.

The first debate with the 2 major political parties given concurrent equal exporsure with a 3rd less sullied contender (entering the house), could only be expected to produce the present opinion polling outcome.

Personally I am surprised that Labour and Conservatives have clung on to as much support as they have.

Political reporting is bound to change as a consequence with the 2 further debates reinforcing voting alternatives.

The situation in Bournemouth is not unlike the rest of the country and represents the fact that elections can be bought with resource provided by unions or wealthy donors.

It's great to see the surge. Getting to take part in the 90 min debate was a fantastic opportunity for Lib Dems policies to be put across directly without spin from the media. I would dearly love to have the money available to seek to take advantage by upping our campaign. The fact is though that almost all of the money we have has been spent on a leaflet and paying the deposit. Our funds are all raised from the local members - we have no Ashcroft or Unions to bankroll us. Aldridge-Brownhills is classed as a safe seat for the Tories - so the press tend to ignore us completely and our issues! However even here I've had several people, including tories,labour and even those who weren't going to vote saying they are opening their eyes to Lib Dem message, so you never know!

I think you visited the wrong constituency. If you had travelled a bit further West to either Dorset West or Dorset North I think you will have found a rather different picture, both contituencies are higher up the Lib Dems target list than Bournemouth West. Both have unpopular Tory incumbents. Oliver Letwin, in particular, has not benefited from having to repay an expense claim to repair a leaing pipe under the tennis court at his second (constituency) home. Nor has his part-time job as a City banker been a help. The Tory run Distict Council's decision to spend millions of pounds to build themselves new offices in Dorchester hasn't done him any favours either.

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