The Jon Cruddas research fascinates me. Can so many voters have really not heard from a political party? And can a Cabinet minister really think that “Modern politics is a virtual politics. This is a politics where parties have supporters whose role is just to pitch up a few quid each year and put up a poster at elections.” I know a few politicians who live in their own virtual world but to take that view of political party members is crass and politically dumb.
Copyblogger theme design by Chris Pearson | Hosted by ENTANET
2 comments ↓
It reminds me of the debate after the 1997 win when rival statistics were circulated to try to prove either that the “ground war” (voter ID and leaflets) won key marginal seats or that that was all out-dated and everything depended on the “air war” (media and advertising). My view was that you need to do both but that ground-level activity is increasingly important in an era of low-turnout (people are far more likely to vote if they have had personal contact from a party esp. the candidate).
I think Jon’s figures may be a bit exagerated – for instance there are very few voters in London who wouldn’t have had at least one leaflet during the May ’06 local elections – we all have lots of personal anecdotes of voters saying they “don;t hear from us outside of election time” even though you know you delivered X number of leaflets through their door and your voter ID records show you’ve spoken to them on multiple occasions.
>>> I think Jon’s figures may be a bit exagerated
Yes and no, Luke.
Yes they probably are somewhat exaggerated in terms of actual leaflets through doors – as you say we usually manage at least one leaflet drop at local elections, if nothing else.
But then no they may not be exaggerated in terms of the impact made by leaflets, many of which will go straight in the bin with all the other junk mail, taxi cards, pizza adverts and other assorted crap than lands on people’s mats every day.
Many of those saying they’ve had nothing from us may well have had studd through the door that simply hasn’t registered because they haven’t stopped to look at it.
I used to produce community newsletters for the NHS in Tipton, 2-3 a year with a print run of 17,500 (every household across three wards) and it really is difficult to grab people’s attention and make them pick something up and read it. With all due respect to CLPs and branches, a lot of printed literature we put out is not particularly well designed or eye-catching, and if it doesn’t stand out, it often does not get noticed.
I’d agree that we need a mix of air and ground war tactics, but what bothered me about Liam and Bill’s comments was the over concentration on the ‘super-marginals’ – to have both a ‘broad church’ and a narrow focus is a difficult act to pull off at the best of times, which we’ve had courtesy of the Tories knack of pushing their own self-destruct button and swerving to the right come election time.
That’s not going to happen next time out, not unless Cameron does something really stupid to ignite his own right-wing headbangers like backing an EU constitution, which makes the centre ground look like being are right old cluster, especially as Ming’s turned out to be a bit of dud.
Overall, I suspect the LD’s may be our biggest problem, both because they’ll be heavily squeezed by both us and the Tories (and I don’t trust their vote to hold up) but also because if things are tight going in then they have every incentive to play both sides of the game in the hope that they could wind up holding the balance of power in a hung Parliament.
There’s too many variables at the moment for me to feel entirely comfortable about the direction some things are heading, although the fog may clear once we get this blessed leadership business settled once and for all.
Leave a Comment