As this week saw the initial skirmishes of what promises to be one of the closest General Election campaigns in history, I wanted to go behind the daily headlines and look at some of the factors that the campaign strategists will be considering.
Know your battleground
I’ve just finished reading Andrew Roberts’ biography ‘Napoleon the Great’, and one of the striking features of this great man’s life, which is particularly well-illustrated in Napoleon’s earlier campaigns in Italy, was the great store he placed on understanding intimately the terrain on which he was to do battle - to ensure that he gained maximum benefit from the forces he had at his disposal and also knew best where to attack the enemy’s defences.
This lesson is particularly salient as we enter the election, as recent polls are varying between a 4% Labour lead and a 4% Conservative lead. With everything still to play for, it’s more important than ever that the party machines are able to discuss their own key strategic issues rather than getting bogged down in issues that are predominantly their opponents’ terrain.
For the Conservatives that means focussing on the success of the economy and economic competence, the leadership qualities of Cameron and Miliband, and their plans to reduce immigration; whilst the Labour Party feels much more at home debating how they would protect the NHS, cut energy bills and address inequality. They don’t have to win every tactical skirmish on days these issues are debated, but strategically they need to ensure more time is spent discussing issues which appeal to a clearly targeted voter base in order to stimulate turnout from the core support as well as win over swing voters.
Perceptions of leadership
The Conservatives used their election launch to seize on leadership as a crucial element of the campaign, with Cameron launching a stinging attack on Ed Miliband’s Labour as “the same old condescending, bossy, interfering, we-know-best attitude of the Hampstead socialist down the ages.”
However, in polls released on the same day as this attack and following on from the leaders’ interviews with Jeremy Paxman, there was a perceived bounce for Labour and for Ed Miliband particularly. Conservative grandee Sir Malcolm Rifkind has attributed this to low public expectations of Labour’s leader. Is this the flaw in the Conservatives’ strategy?
With the Conservative media aggressively highlighting Ed Miliband’s character and perceived geekiness for pretty much all of 2014, his greater direct media exposure during the short campaign may lead to a shift in public perceptions as people see he is not as bad as they thought he was - perhaps indicating that the Conservative spin machine has overplayed its hand, not least due to Cameron’s reluctance to take part in a head-to-head debate.
However, there are still reality checks for Labour in the last weekend’s YouGov poll (28/3) - Cameron still beats Miliband in popularity as the best candidate for Prime Minister by 35% to 23% and in subsequent polls, the Labour lead over the Conservatives has disappeared, suggesting perhaps that YouGov’s figures are outliers in the general trend. Nevertheless, the leadership question will not go away and could have a major say on how this election plays out. Keep an eye on polling about which leader the electorate trusts, which could put Cameron and Miliband on more of an even footing.
Posters and activity
With people posting online and lots of money being spent on a digital election, the role of the old window poster is often forgotten. What window posters do is give an authentic demonstration of support for a particular campaign within a particular constituency. As you go round a constituency in the last weeks of a campaign, do look at the number of posters in people’s homes. Often it will help you decide whether a campaign is actually in with a chance of winning an election.
What the number of posters tells you is how effective the doorstep campaign has been, and it is not to be underestimated how many people vote based on the evidence of which parties are active locally - much more so than telephone canvassing, where people believe (often mistakenly) that it comes from outside the area. As the campaign nears its end, canvassers of all parties will be trying to squeeze the vote of the third and fourth parties in marginal constituencies – their job will be made much easier if people can literally see the evidence of support from their friends and neighbours, encouraging them to get to the polling booths.
Final thought
In this incredibly tight election, the ground is constantly shifting – some of the issues that seemed important this week will fade extremely quickly – it’s important to retain a sense of perspective until we really see the results on May 8.
This article also appears on Bellenden Elections, as part of our weekly in-depth analysis. For more from the team, visit www.bellendenelections.co.uk.