Tag Archives: james knight

New research service offered to election candidates

By Mark Pack | Sat 25th July 2009 - 6:49 pm

The newly launched Get Elected research firm says that,

If you’re a candidate using Get Elected, you get the support you need when and how you need it. With our bank of political researchers, varying not just in geography, but expertise and political affliation, you’ll get the researcher that best suits your needs – and one you can trust. As we work for candidates across all political groups, we are confident in being able to find someone suitable for your campaign.

Candidates are used to making use of their own resources, that of volunteers and those of their party. So is there a gap for a commercial service offering to sell such services? The idea of having research as and when you want it could have appeal to some, though with money playing a much smaller role in British politics than in American politics, it’s not so obvious if enough people will have the funds and willingness to pay for such external services.

I mention America because this style of campaign organisation – buying in key services from external, non-party suppliers – is very much a feature of politics there, although in Britain the range of services brought in is typically much narrower and more technical (e.g. paying for printing but not for research). Other similar Western democracies, such as Canada, Australia and New Zealand, fall much more in to the British than the American pattern.

I asked Get Elected’s founder, James Knight about this and he said: