For me the striking thing about Labour’s final week campaign is not the effectiveness of the poster itself but who it it aimed at. For study after study has shown that the group most detached from the political process are younger working class women. Not only are they less likely to vote than working class men of the same age but they are also much less likely to have any political allegiance. But how do you get to them? In…
SkyNews What does this do to “Vote Yellow get Brown”? In the eleven days since Nick Clegg’s Liberal Democrats emerged as a force at the first debate the blue team’s main line of attack has been “Vote Yellow get Brown”. Given the ongoing unpopularity of the Prime Minister and the desire for change being shown in the polls this had a lot of potency which would have dominated the Tories’ final week’s campaigning. That has been knocked on the head…
Why’s Labour not using such a traditionally effective medium? All elections are different in some way from what’s gone before as new campaigning techniques and opportunities come in, as new issues and concerns arise and as new candidates find alternative ways of interacting with the electorate. This one’s no exception. While much has rightly been made of the TV debates – by far the biggest innovation of the 2010 election – one major component of recent elections seems curiously absent this…
Is Dale right – “this is the smartest poster yet”? Iain Dale has blogged on this suggesting that it’s smart because “it’s what most voters think”. I think he’s wrong and that the poster is a mistake. Are UKIP trying to put not voting at all on the same level as voting UKIP? UKIP have a good message on the EU – why not stick with it? And I’m not so sure whether using what many consider to be a…
Let’s stop the clap-trap about the uniform national swing So much tosh will be talked about the UNS (Uniform National Swing) in the coming weeks that I thought that we ought to feature a reminder of how successful it’s been in the past four election in predicting eventual seat totals from the national vote share numbers. Thanks to Andy Cooke on the previous thread for providing this. In 1992, Labour ourtperformed the UNS (which was about 2%) by 1-2% in…
Should they be taking the focus off Brown? Posters are coming out at such a rate at the moment that it’s hard to keep up. This one from the Tories is trying to build on the perceived advantage from last week over the NI tax move. It’s theme is very much the same as the famous 1992 “Double Whammy” poster that was said to have been so successful. I’m not totally convinced of the visual portrayal. To me it’s good…
Does Marf’s cartoon hit the nail on the head? In all the discussion over Labour’s “Gene Hunt” poster everybody seems to have by-passed what the party’s core message ought to be – the need to counter the desire for something different that polling suggests is what getting on for two-thirds of voters want. For as has been said so often there are only two big ideas in election battles – either it is “time for change” or “don’t let the…
..or is featuring Cameron an own goal? This is Labour’s latest ad – the much-hyped one that was designed by a 24 year old supporter from St. Albans. I don’t think that people will immediately get it. Those who were adults at the start of the 80s are now in their fifties and is there a widespread sense that the decade was an awful one for the country in the way that poster tries to suggest? But the mega-mistake is…