Mark Pack

A new survey about how many people have been reached by the online campaigning of political parties has been written up in the media as a bad news story, in more than one place, even though the data shows online campaigning reaching not that many fewer people than offline campaigning.

The Nesta survey found 21% of people saying they could recall emails, adverts or websites from the political parties. This compares with 27% of the electorate who say in the recent Brunel survey that they have been reached by the offline campaigning of political parties.

Neither number is as high as would be good to see in a healthy democracy, but the closeness of the gap (27% – 21%) shows just how far online campaigning has moved into the mainstream.