Last week’s Politics Home poll provided another example of what both public and private party research has consistently shown for at least 15 years. The biggest obstacle to persuading people to vote Liberal Democrat isn’t getting them to agree with a particular policy or to like a particular candidate or leader. It’s persuading people that we can win in that constituency or ward.
In last week’s PoliticsHome poll 44% said they would “definitely” or “probably” Liberal Democrat if we had “a serious chance of winning in your constituency”. That finding is nothing new as you can see, for example, from Russell & Fieldhouse’s Neither Left nor Right who show that consistently many more people agree with our policies and beliefs than vote for us.
Persuading people we have a chance can be frustratingly difficult, even where we won the election last time round. You’d have thought that would be pretty solid evidence for us having a chance next time – but that is only the case for people who know that we won last time. Even in constituencies with Liberal Democrat MPs, there is often a significant chunk of the population who pay almost no attention to politics and go on political choice auto-pilot, assuming we must be out of the race unless our efforts jog them into thinking again.
This does not mean that our policies or the qualities of our candidates do not matter, nor that the national story has no impact at all, particularly in seats where we are not yet at the point where we can credibly persuade people we can win. But it does mean that in those seats where we can, persuading people of that is vital – and that is about much more than simply sticking a barchart or two on leaflets during the last few weeks before polling day.
Regularly quoting Liberal Democrat councillors, assembly members and Parliamentarians helps remind people that we can and do win elections. It is also why stories emphasising our popularity and success are important – such as the story about the record growth in local party membership or the photo featuring a candidate with local residents. And it’s why the well designed bar chart should be a regular feature of literature.
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14 Comments
The most important thing as someone who does this work on a consistent basis that just dumping a whole load of literature on a seat is that there needs to be credibility with a hard working reasonable candidate. Doesn’t matter if you’re ugly, hair like Queen or simply Mr/Mrs sensible – as long as you’re repeating back to them the key messages and are positive on the doorstep.
It’s great to do surveys and telephoning is the icing on the cake – the most important thing for target seats I believe now is the doorstep canvassing.
“It’s persuading people that we can win in that constituency or ward.”
Seeing as this has been a constant failing of the Lib Dems ever since they were created, I’m not expecting this to change anytime soon – particularly with such a limp leadership who consistently demonstrate why they are not capable or worthy of winning elections.
LFAT – in that case, I assume I shall never see any of your ilk complaining about our use of bar charts ever again. After all, if we’ve constantly failed to convince people that we can win in a particular place while using them, surely there’s no reason for you people to get your panties in a twist when we do.
Some months ago the LibDems called in some ‘experts’ to advise on this issue. They had two simple pieces of advice 1. Talk about power 2. Have a LibDem narrative.
At Conference Nick Clegg did the first, the ‘why I want to be prime minister’ bit, but failed miserably on the second. There was no consistant LibDem narrative nationally.
Locally, we use bar charts and our narrative is ‘Only the Liberal Democrats campaign on your behalf and keep you informed all year round’ Locally, this is all we need. Nationally we need more. What will we do in Government, what will our priorities be, how will we be different? Answers in 20 words. The clever bit is to do it in 20 words. Go to it LibDems.
he biggest obstacle to persuading people to vote Liberal Democrat isn’t getting them to agree with a particular policy or to like a particular candidate or leader. It’s persuading people that we can win in that constituency or ward.
If this is true, why don’t we do better in PR elections? In the last three Euro elections, we have underperformed in comparison with our poll standings. In the Scottish Parliament elections, we consistently score higher in the constituency votes over the country than we do in the list votes, from which we get most of our seats. This doesn’t seem to tally with the idea that we suffer from tactical voting by potential Lib Dem supporters who vote for the party they think can win locally.
Food for thought Malcolm. One possibility is that our voters want to support a local personality, which the list system doesn’t give them.
The other possibility is that the swines are just making excuses to themselves as to why they are voting for a selfish party (Tory, Labour) rather than in the national interest (Lib Dem). If it wasn’t the wasted vote argument, they’d have to find another bogus excuse to salve their consciences!
Malcolm – firstly because while thye may want to see uswin in Westminster elections they strongly disagree with us about Europe – secondly because we have nowhere near the resources needed to run the level of campaign that makes us look like winners across large regions.
Malcolm: in addition to Neil’s points, the larger the scale an election is, the less likely the public are to think we can win it. So it’s easier to persuade them we can win a local council election than it is to persuade them we can win in a region-wide election. It’s easy to see why people may think that for, at the two extremes, compare the number of councillors we have with the number of Prime Ministers we have.
Okay, but in the Scottish elections, not only did we get fewer votes in the regional vote than the constituencies, but so did the three bigger parties (in all three elections to date). The relative gainers were the smaller parties – Greens, Scottish Socialists, BNP, etc. (Most of these parties in fact don’t put up candidates in most or all constituencies as they realise that their only chance of getting seats is at the regional level.) So there is no need to “look like winners” across large regions in order to get votes – it looks as though the electorate are in fact able to work out that their vote will count in list elections even if they don’t vote for the “winner”.
I suspect the problem is deeper: not people’s reluctance to believe that we can win, but a lack of clarity about what we stand for. Not policies, not electoral credibility, but identity is perhaps the issue.
Obviously, I posted before Mark’s post appeared, but the basic point remains. I don’t think people necessarily are thinking “I want to vote for a party that can win”. Is there in fact any hard evidence for that sort of thinking among voters, or is it a story we tell ourselves to excuse them for not choosing us? 😕
And yes, before anyone else points it out, I had indeed already forgotten that the whole point of this post was that there is indeed some evidence of this sort of thinking. (Sorry, Mark!) 😳
However, it’s still not a terribly convincing poll. The question asked rather obviously leads the respondent to think that they should “consider” voting LibDem in the scenario described, and I don’t think it can be taken as a serious indication of people’s true motivation when making their vote choice. I’m sceptical of any suggestion that people are sophisticated enough to think about the likelihood of Lib Dems winning the race in a particular constituency but not enough to realise that their vote won’t be “wasted” in a PR election. (Though when it comes to sophistication – can anyone explain the 1% of “Lib Dem voters” who told the pollsters they definitely wouldn’t consider voting for us if we had a chance of winning?) 😯
Just one point for Malcolm re the Scottish vote. The regional vote is for TOP-UP seats, so there is absolutely no point in using that vote for the Liberal Democrats in those regions (particularly Highlands, but also others) where we win so many constituency seats that there is no chance of a top-up. Similarly for the other main parties in areas where they dominate – hence regional votes go to a second choice who will not win a constituency seat but can reach the 6 or 7 % to grasp a first seat under the top-up process.
That’s an interesting idea, Ian, but (1) I suspect it imputes too much psephological sophistication to the electorate and (2) the data don’t really support it – in the last election, LDs shed about as much of its constituency vote in the Glasgow Region (where they won no constituencies) as in Highlands & Islands. See this very detailed statistical analysis, which finds no evidence of significant strategic patterns in the high levels of split voting in the Scottish elections:
http://www.epop08.com/papers/documents/EPOP08-Gilmour-PreConf-Paper-10Sep08.pdf
I’m sorry, but I do think the lib dems have a problem with leadership. Clegg does not represent the best qualities of the lib dems – intelligence, self-scrutany, honesty and sound, solid argument. His interviews are full of ‘politicians answers’ as opposed to say, Cable, who I’ve never heard to duck an argument. Clegg lacks self-confidence (with justice, I feel) and is just not nimble enough in conversation to get detailed policy accross in a clear way. I think really think that in terms of policy, this is the lib dems moment, but having a leader that is impossible to admire intellectually is a real problem for right minded voters.