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- author, Oscar Bentley and Lauren Tavriger
- role, BBC Political Research Unit
BBC analysis shows the Conservative Party is running a very defensive general election campaign, with Rishi Sunak visiting areas where the party has won easily in the past.
The Prime Minister has been campaigning in constituencies where the Conservatives won a landslide victory in the last election, securing a nominal majority of more than 20,000 votes.
Recent constituencies include Grantham and Bourne (22,393 votes, 46% of the total vote) and Torridge and Tavistock (22,899 votes, 42%).
Labour and Liberal Democrat leaders have also been campaigning in areas won by the Conservatives in 2019, again often by wide margins.
Party leaders visit regions for a variety of reasons, but campaign visits send a strong signal about where each party thinks its priorities should be.
The BBC has compiled a summary of the three leaders’ activities since the beginning of the year.
The data here focuses on visits that took place in England and Wales between the call for the general election on 22 May and 22 June. Our data is based on visits attended by media and visits reported online by a variety of sources. It is not a complete list as leaders may have chosen to personally attend events.
We use expected outcomes to understand how safe seats compare to 2019. The district maps have changed since 2019, so the seats aren’t directly comparable. The expected outcomes are based on calculating what the results would have been under the new district maps in 2019.
The figures for each seat are given as the majority of the winning party and the percentage of the vote that it represents.
The clearest pattern identified in our analysis is the focus of all three parties on Conservative-controlled areas.
The Conservatives won the 2019 election handily, so such an outcome was always a possibility.
But around 90% of Mr Sunak’s visits analysed by the BBC since the election began have been in areas won by the Conservatives in 2019, signalling a very defensive campaign – a continuation of a pattern seen from earlier this year.
One concern among some Conservatives is how many traditionally safe constituencies Mr Sunak has won by wasting valuable time campaigning.
These include Suffolk Coastal (18,355 votes, 35% of the total vote), South Northamptonshire (23,671 votes, 42%), Melksham and Devizes (17,028 votes, 31%) and Swindon North (13,250 votes, 28%).
This does not mean that the Conservatives are afraid of losing all of these constituencies, but their decision to send the Prime Minister to these constituencies ahead of polling day is significant.
This not only suggests they feel the need to shore up their support, but also means that Mr Sunak cannot devote as much time to other, more peripheral areas.
At the same time, 76% of Sir Keir Starmer’s visits since the start of the election campaign (counted by the BBC) have been to Conservative victories in 2019.
This includes areas with significant nominal majorities such as Reading West and Mid Berkshire, Bassetlaw, Nuneaton, Thurrock and Monmouthshire.
Again, Labour does not necessarily expect to win all of these elections, but it is important that the leader is spending time campaigning in these areas during the election period.
If Labor wins these seats, it will have a sizeable majority on the Fourth of July.
The Liberal Democrats are also targeting Conservative-held seats. Since the election began, Ed Davey has almost exclusively targeted Conservative seats: 33 of his 35 visits, or 94%, have been in areas won by the Conservatives in the last general election.
Again, many of the areas visited had significant Conservative majorities in 2019. These included Chichester, North Norfolk, Eastleigh and South Devon.
We do not include Scotland or the SNP leader, John Swinney, in this data as Scottish parties often make their own campaign visits, which makes it difficult to compare data on campaign visits.
They also decided not to include Northern Ireland because it is ruled by its own political party.
Additional reporting by Sarah Gratte, Sophie van Bruggen, Callum May and Nick Eardley.
