General Election 2024

Presumably they will try to hold onto it afterwards too

If everything is done properly then they shouldn't.

Most of the time they never even see it - they just give the list to the company that is doing the mailshot and a big machine prints letters, stuffs envelopes, prints postage and then the list is deleted.

If someone wants to do it more cheaply then the partial lists are sent to someone locally who gets the letters printed and then they stuff the envelopes manually. Then they have a choice of:

• paying for postage
  
• divvying them up to an army of volunteers to hand deliver them
  
  

Last time Mrs GB helped out she spent a few hours stuffing envelopes with the personalised letters that had been printed off, and then these were split up into bundles of ~100 or so for local volunteers to post by hand. It took 45 minutes or so for her to deliver the 100 along our road.

For a generic flyer that isn't personalised they can pay Royal Mail to get them delivered by the local posties. Much cheaper than a 2nd class stamp or the effort of printing personalised letters or anything that goes in an envelope.

Obviously this relies upon everyone along the way not keeping a copy of the full register, but they can get into big shit with the ICO and Electoral Register people if they keep the full lists for any longer than necessary to do the mailshots.

The constituency I live in (Putney, where I think you used to live) was the only one that went from Con to Lab in the 2019 GE so, theoretically, it should be pretty safe given the swing to Labour but there are a few local issues (housing/planning) that the other parties are trying to make a big thing about. There's also going to be a higher than national average number of people affected by the VAT on private schools decision. We've had non-personalised leaflets from the Tories, Reform and Greens delivered by the postie, but Labour has sent personalised letters and paid for the postage so they're obviously a little bit nervous about this constituency.

In increasing order of worry about the borough it would be something like:

• No flyer at all
  
• Flyer probably delivered by random contractors (not completely reliable)
  
• Flyer delivered by postie (more reliable)
  
• Personalised letter delivered by volunteer
  
• Personalised letter delivered by post
  
  

Canvassing is an extra consideration and could be applied to some/many/all of the above but tends to be selective based on housing (e.g. voting differences between the extremes of poor estate housing and £5m+ houses in the constituency). Rarely do they aim to canvass every single property in a constituency.