Lots of insight in this talk about the 2017 Conservative general election campaign from Steve Parker, who worked on the Conservative Party’s advertising account in 2015:

Steve Parker, Planning Director of M&C Saatchi, gives his perspective on the differences between the 2015 and 2017 Conservative Party general election campaigns and suggests reasons as to why they lost their majority.

One thing he doesn’t mention is the changed legal context. Following the record fine on the Conservative Party, several of the tactics the party used to make up for the weakness of its grassroots volunteer base in 2015 had to be dropped.

Although the party found new ways of getting in trouble with the law, this was a notable change in the party’s electoral tactics. The detailed British Elections Study data along with the Justin Fisher and co. survey of election agents will help shed light in due course on whether this had an impact on the results.