Who are our target voters that will increase our core vote?
What are the challenges they face? What are their hopes and fears? What are the three biggest, most fundamental, most enduring issues they care about enough to vote or change their vote? How do we know we have got beyond face value of what they say to what really influences what they do, in the voting booth?
What is our clear message to them on each issue, based on our values and expressed through our policies? How is that message different to the other parties? Is the message simple enough to be expressed in a sentence?
Do these messages form a coherent, compelling and positive story? Does that story speak to them? Does it appeal to their hearts as well as their minds? Does that story create a choice for them? Is voting for us the positive decision in that choice?
Is our story reaching them? Is it expressed in terms they understand and ways they appreciate? Is it impacting them in the way we thought it would? How do we know?
How do we know what emerging issues and events to engage with or to avoid distracting from our story? Is the issue in the target voters mind and does it make sense to them? Is it connected with them and with us? Can we show difference to our opponents? Does it change their voting behaviour?
Do we have these answers? If not, what do we need to get them? What do we need in place to continually improve this all?
* Freddie Jewitt is a Lib Dem member in East Herts.
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25 Comments
Good questions. We have to build on our own identity to build a new core vote who vote us as a positive choice.
Thanks @Simon. This was written before the 2019 General Election Review was published but I think it ties in with much of what was identified. We seem to know we have gaps in our structure and approach – hopefully we can act on them.
@Michael – sorry, no idea where Simon came from!
That’s a lot of questions, Freddie. You might find some of the answers you are looking for in the party president, Mark Pack’s newswire:
https://www.markpack.org.uk/161184/a-fair-society-is-a-resilient-society-the-future-for-the-lib-dems/
Thanks @Joseph – I’ve drawn from Mark’s Strategy leaflets and also from the Lynton Crosby Campaigning Masterclass video he shared on his blog a few weeks back. While I think he would broadly agree with the set of questions and the approach they endorse, what we don’t have are a comprehensive set of answers. The General Election Review published last week acknowledges the structural gaps we have that frustrates our ability to produce this. I am encouraged to see the job notice for the newly created Director of Strategy, Messaging and Communications role – definitely a step in the right direction.
The trouble with concentrating everything on ‘Core Voters’ is that in a First Past the Post electoral system you can’t win just with Core Voters, niche policies get niche votes as the Thornhill Review observes. Also, concentrating exclusively on Core messages can drive away those other voters that you need to win, as with the 3 year Bollocks to Brexit/Revoke campaign.
Labour made this mistake after their 1979 defeat and and the Benn/Foot Socialist Manifesto in 1983 gave them their worst electoral result since WW2. Until Corbyn repeated the mistake in 2019 and gave them their worst result since the 1930’s. Cameron had to upset a lot of his Party in order to broaden its appeal and gain relative success in 2010 and absolute success in 2015. Hillary Clinton failed to campaign beyond her base, Trump on the other hand won ‘safe’ Blue Collar States that Hillary had taken for granted.
Freddie
No way ought you, or any member, describe you, or themselves, a person, as a paper candidate. You were and maybe are, better than that.
These very good points , can be distilled.
How do we connect?
Hi @ Paul Holmes, thanks for your comment. My view is that without securing your core vote, niche votes aren’t going to unlock the win either.
Mark Pack speaks to this in his recent post that Joseph B links to above:
‘In first-past-the-post elections, 20% would of course not be enough to win. But that 20% is not evenly distributed. In fact, the party’s research in the last Parliament shows that liberals are heavily skewed towards particular Parliamentary constituencies, showing strongly both in those seats that the party won in 2010 and in new territory for the party.
What’s more, starting with a larger core vote means starting far closer to the winning line in far more seats. That is both a direct advantage in itself and also an indirect one because the closer we start to the winning line the more effectively we can target swing voters to take us the last part of the way to the winning line. The sort of clever targeting of intensive activity on a small number of voters which gets widely praised as the hallmark of modern winning general election campaigns simply does not work if you start as far away from the winning line as we usually do.’
Re: core focus excluding niche – I suppose I am saying we should prioritise core vote first, if we can pick up niche votes with targeted policies that are congruent with our story than so much the better, as long as they are ‘narrowband’ messages which aren’t conflicting or competing with the ‘broadband’. Speaking in the language of the Thornhill review, we cannot lose the air war by strafing at every potential target, we need to carpet bomb our main targets.
Thanks for commenting @Lorenzo Cherin.
I don’t mean paper candidate in a derogatory or negative sense – only that I didn’t actively campaign. As I said to my partner on our first anniversary – ‘what’s wrong with paper?’
Thanks for your compliment. Here’s a distillation:
– Focus on your target segment
– Understand their long-term needs and what drives their vote
– Speak only to these needs
– Be different and positive
– Tell a story, evidenced by value driven policies that are easily understood
– Communicated in ways that register with them and they appreciate
– Have a way to check you are achieving all this and can refine it
Happy to connect but new to this – you can find me on twitter @Fjewitt
Whether the starting point is a core vote strategy or a target seat strategy, the conclusions are much the same. Evenly distributed votes do not win seats, however targeting struggles and very likely fails in a context of a declining overall vote share.
Beyond this, a core vote strategy has an obvious value for the Party, if there is an aim to present a distinct identity, with recognisable values.
@Martin – thanks for your comment. I definitely agree that our identity must be differentiated from the other parties and rooted in our values.
We must stop navel gazing; look out into the world that does not support us. What are their main issues, apart from Corvid19. There are many but one is HS2, where Polls indicate 85+%. are against it. Suggest a dedicated fact finding group is set up to look at ALL the data. Look at all the Social Media outlets such as Twitter & facebook, see where the opposition to HS2 or support is coming from; then test the credibility of both the Antis & the Pros. Personally I would support HighSpeed Broadband in every UK Household rather than HS2.
On standing as a paper candidate, can I contribute one of my favourite political stories? My daughter’s godmother, a committed and serious Liberal Democrat and Baptist, explained to us how she had ‘unintentionally’ found herself elected as a local councillor. ‘Well, William, I though it a bit of a cheek to have my name on the ballot paper, as I’d only lived there for 3 years, so I thought at least I should go round and introduce myself to everybody…’
Opposing HS2 and suggesting wider rail network development might bring some regional gains in support where there is HS2 blight and does have wider merit. There is no environmental benefit of HS2 given it’s planned huge energy use even after construction and the intended destruction of hundreds of ancient woods. Score of rare, beautiful London Plain trees have already been felled at Euston for HS2. The use of virtual business meetings via the net blows away any small gains HS2’s case might have previously contrived.
We are entering a post industrial revolution where robots will replace physical work and advanced computing will replace white collar and professional work. Uniquely in history, this combination will even replace new spin off jobs created.
At the same time, global warming and pressures on resources from population and development make this a uniquely difficult point in all history. If we get it wrong, the world will not be worth living in.
In general the LibDems need to figure out how to address the coming changes and own them. Labour and the Greens will offer their version and the Tories will bumble along hoping it will never really amount to much. The LibDems need to work out how to address these problems and put it to the public in aways that addresses their concerns and needs in a way they can understand
@Ewen, thanks for commenting.
Agree we need to be led by research and data, both quantitative and qualitative with a caveat that we cannot focus on everyone, we need to be looking at a target segment.
I agree with you re: HS2 and BB – but point is do our target segment agree?
@John, thanks for commenting.
‘In general the LibDems need to figure out how to address the coming changes and own them. Labour and the Greens will offer their version and the Tories will bumble along hoping it will never really amount to much. The LibDems need to work out how to address these problems and put it to the public in aways that addresses their concerns and needs in a way they can understand.’
This is exactly right but the key part of it is focusing our message on the changes which our target segment care about most. We must identify who they are and what they care about as the first step. The other important issues can and should be thought of and policies set out in our manifesto – but we only have limited opportunity to broadcast our key messages, so we need to be focused.
Freddie, I wonder if that narrow targeting is as valid as it once was. The pollsters identified a huge amount of churn between votes and intended votes for particular parties. The LibDem polls percentage went up to about 25% last autumn, then fell gradually to 11.5% and now back to 7%-11%. People were joining the LibDems and voting Labour.
The next programme has to have a very boiled down precis core message available and it has to address real and growing concerns.
Up to last recession there was more of a case for laissez faire economics but that ship has sailed and if the LibDems struck to that losing case, such as trying to legitimate the gig economy, they are doomed. Even the Tories have adapted to go around it.
@Freddie Jewit 7.42am.
Hi Freddie, I’m afraid you mis read my comments. I am not arguing for targetting niche votes, I’m saying that concentrating everything on a supposed Lib Dem Core Vote IS pursuing niche policies which will only attract niche votes (we are currently averaging 7 or 8% in the Opinion Polls once again, just as we did for most of 2010- Spring 2019).
I have been a member for 37 years and won 4 out of 5 Council elections and 2 out of 3 Parliamentary elections that I stood for. Never did I run on some sort of purist platform designed to appeal only to people who shared my particular priorities such as Constitutional Reform. I would never have been elected even once had I done so.
In European PR systems an Economic Liberal FDP in Germany or Social Liberal D66 in the Netherlands can occupy a niche and still get elected. That just does not work in UK FPTP elections.
Neither can I understand that some in the Liberal Democrats want to commit us to concentrating our policies and messaging to suit a tiny number of seats (mainly in London and the South East) with high proportions of educated middle class people. That would mean becoming a truly insular, niche Party with little to say to most of the UK including all those areas we held seats in only 10 years ago. So much for the oft proclaimed need for the Lib Dems to be more diverse!
I think both John Littler and Paul Holmes are correct in their analysis. The Libdem core vote is estimated at around 5%. As John notes there is huge churn in voting these days and a broad-based policy platform that speaks to and addresses the needs of the great majority of voters is essential. Targeting can’t overcome the absence of such a platform.
Personally, I think there is far too much credence given to class divisions. Most people, whatever their circumstances, want the same thing from government. Competence in delivering good quality public health, education and local authority services; economic security in the form of a functioning and sustainable economy and environment that can provide jobs with a decent wage and housing at affordable levels; an adequate and reliable social security system that provides for pensioners and those in need through a fair and progressive tax system; and a system of policing and justice that provides for physical security.
@ John, Paul and Joseph,
I think we are arguing for the same thing – potentially my use of the term ‘core’ has confused matters. I am absolutely saying we need to appeal to a broader spectrum of the electorate to grow our core vote, not to double down by targeting our existing base. As I say in my first line: ‘Who are our target voters that will increase our core vote?’
There is an interesting discussion to be had on what we think is ‘broad’? What % we should aim at/target. Mark Pack has proposed a 20% target as a sustainable base to have a foundation? Conservatives won the last election with ~43%, Labour on ~32%. What issues are going to be significant and long lasting enough that you can make an enduring message and platform that appeals over the life-cycle of the next few parliaments.
Couldn’t help thinking of Tony Benn adage .Who has the power in the party that led to these awful mistakes and how do we get rid of them ?
Why do we exist apart from providing a safe haven for disillusioned MPs from other Parties? To me it is to save the planet, defend human rights, decrease inequality and promote global harmony. We need clear message(s) that show these principles distinguish us from all the rest.
@Neil – what specific mistakes do you think have been made around this?
From my perspective, I am encouraged by the Thornhill review – it acknowledged the lack of a strategy and put the spotlight on the structural gaps we have that frustrate our ability to come up with a comprehensive and quality set of answers to these questions. Plus the recent Job posting for a Director of Strategy role in HQ would appear to be the accountable figure for this.
@Peter. Thanks for commenting. They are worthy aims and values. Is that your personal perspective or what you understand to be the areas where the party should seek broader appeal? My concern is they are so broad to the point of not being differentiated from the other parties – the greens would claim the same for the environment, Labour for inequality etc.
As per Ewen’s comment, I want us to take a research and data led approach focused on our target voters. It’s not about denying or distorting our values to make them fit but speaking ultra-specifically about the ones we share, that they care about most and make sure we talk about them in the right way.
@William – that’s brilliant! Shows what the cost of bit of shoe leather can accomplish. I learned a lot from my experience, even if it was primarily passive. It got me started on thinking how we are positioned locally and nationally.