Peter Smith, visiting lecturer in Journalism, Communications and Politics at the University of Lincoln, opines on the elections on the Expert Comment Blog:
Many people will want to vote to record their disgust with a ‘dodgy’ local MP or to mark the call for change and the campaign planners will be lining up their slogans and stunts to prove that they are the party of ‘change’, ‘fairness’, ‘the future’, ‘Middle England’ and all those case-hardened phrases that only seem to emerge every four or five years.
Smith says we are faced with the most unpredictable election for more than 30 years, though predicting anything other than the unpredictable is not going to hold for long.
Too often in recent years, public apathy and the crowded centre ground of politics has meant that fewer voters have abandoned their sofas for the polling booth. MPs and the media must hare some of the blame for that but this time around, they must all fight to get the vote out.
Read the whole post on the Expert Comment Blog.