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Election Campaigns: A Behind-The-Scenes Peek

Election Campaigns: A Behind-The-Scenes Peek

With less than two weeks left to go until polling day, the parties' political campaigns are being hard fought and rigorously stage-managed. Sky News correspondents Niall Paterson, Michelle Clifford and Jason Farrell shed light on what's happening behind the scenes.

Niall Paterson on the Conservative trail

It's been five years since I last worked on the political brief.

Many things have changed - the dramatis personae ("Who on earth is THAT? They're in the CABINET?"); the parties with legitimate claim to airtime (basically, all of them); the means with which we journos communicate from the campaign trail (going live from buses makes me feel sick).

Plenty, though, remains the same - battlebus camaraderie, daft events involving Boris, and hacks complaining about access.

In 2010, I was with the Labour team, and the most common complaint was that Gordon Brown didn't meet real people.

Actually, that was a nonsense. He met plenty of real people. He just didn't talk politics to them.

I remember a group of supermarket workers waiting to engage about national insurance, Brown asked if they'd been watching the football.

Fast forward to the present day, and the criticism of the Conservative campaign is again slightly more nuanced than a simple complaint over lack of access.

True, there have been precious few incidents where events have happened without a camera being there - though those occasions still rankle.

We have a group of media handlers who are both quick to provide briefing or rebuttal, and who work pretty hard to ensure we're fed, watered, even entertained.

And the PM himself is, when in one of our off camera huddles, engaging, unguarded and even rather humorous (although if he mentions again that my overcoat makes me look like Nigel Farage, his close protection might have to get involved).

Yet latterly this has become, without doubt, one of the most stage-managed campaigns in British political history - perhaps THE most.

There is no risk here.

Small, selected audiences await us at almost every location, bearing grins and campaign slogan placards.

The only ones in attendance who are not party members are the employees of the firms who've agreed to host the event.

The PM arrives in a secure area, glad-hands briefly or for a few minutes, delivers a seemingly impromptu address peppered with local references, concluding with a warning about the SNP - yet without those local flourishes it would be indistinguishable from the rest.

No questions from genuinely floating voters, no opportunity for even a bit of heckling, perhaps a quick one question one answer "interview" with a member of the travelling press, and then he's gone - and on to the next one.

The much lauded Cameron Direct events, where he does genuinely answer any question from members of the audience, again take place in secure locations with if not hand-picked audiences then with their bosses looking on (certainly not members of the public) and the microphone taken from them so there's no chance to hear if they're happy with his response.

The claim to be taking the message to the public is only true thanks to the cameras in attendance.

Jason Farrell on the Labour trail

We are all living and breathing the campaign, but none more so than Ed Miliband who, cocooned in red banners, arrives in Ipswich to press palms and knock out a sound-bite to the media. It is mid-week and already he has done the same in London, Glasgow, Preston, Manchester and Cambridge.

Of course events are stage-managed.

To some extent Labour, like the Conservatives, seems to be measuring the success of its campaign on whether or not it achieves a "gaff-free" day.

It is all very safe.

Hence, a sense of frustration pervades the journalistic ensemble which follows Mr Miliband from marginal to marginal. Where is the next big story of this campaign? How much access are they really getting to the leader?

Labour has produced some of the key headlines of the campaign period from Non-Doms to Milifandoms. But the week’s focus on the NHS is hardly new or grabby.

As battle-bus journalists cluster to decide what are the key questions of the day for the Labour leader - the choice seems rather threadbare ranging from a re-heated announcement on cancer diagnosis (Labour’s push), to a tweet from David Cameron about Alex Salmond controlling the Labour budget (Tory push).

No wonder everyone seems most excited about Mr Miliband’s strange transformation from geek to social media sex-symbol. The man himself thinks there has been some mistake. "One Direction have nothing to worry about," Mr Miliband assures us.

It may be tongue-in-cheek - but the man who surprised himself by saying "Hell-Yes" to Jeremy Paxman - does seem to be transforming before the eyes of many voters over the course of this campaign.

As a result there is a confidence bubble within the Labour camp - and a palpable hope that it could carry them into Number 10.

Is this transformation in the minds of voters real, or as fake as some of the photos super-imposing Mr Miliband’s face onto film-stars? It is still hard to judge.

Michelle Clifford on the Liberal Democrat trail

Up at 0500, leave Penzance hotel 0530, visit to fish market 0600, coach to another hotel 0630, interview with possible Kingmaker 0700, bacon butties 0730, coach to airport, plane to London, coach, another visit, another interview, coach, take off luggage, collapse.

A day in the life of the press and media pack trailing a party leader with seats to defend from Cornwall to Scotland.

Nick Clegg has been pitching the Lib Dems as the party which can stop a swing to the left or right in coalition and had been putting in the miles selling the messages.

Michelle Clifford has been listening.

Darren McCaffrey on the UKIP trail

"And it's back to Margate please Pete", I bark, as me and our cameraman head back along the north Kent coast.

It is a route that's become all too familiar, as UKIP's campaign has focused on its heartlands, swathes of Essex and Kent.

For the most gaffe prone, least well organised and funded party, their election campaign has been notable in its confined ambition.

Lots of pubs, yes, town hall meetings, yes, but ultimately its primary aim is to get Nigel Farage elected, with a handful of seats elsewhere.

So it's a campaign of few controversies and scandals, which has blunted the party's press coverage - a balance some within the party seem happy with, while others vent their frustration.

There are two distinct aspects of UKIP's campaign, firstly, it can and is often chaos.

Events and timings change, plans ripped up, wrong postcodes supplied – planning is difficult and ad hoc.

There is no grid, there is instead a daily political wind test which informs that days campaigning.

And those political wind tests are often the musings of Nigel Farage.

Unlike the other campaigns we get a lot, often unfettered access to the UKIP leader, whether it is in the media scrum, the quite moment over a cigarette or indeed catching a pint on the campaign trail.

It's not slick, it can be chaotic, but in tune with the party's outlook - it feels almost like campaigning of old.