101 Ways to Win an Election, by Mark Pack and Edward Maxfield

[nwhyte]

I have no immediate plans to return to electoral politics (full disclosure: Cambridge City Council, 1990; North Belfast, 1996). However, I deal on a daily basis with people who are personally very much involved with elections, and occasionally they even ask my advice, so it was useful to return to basics with this handbook - not so much 101

Comments

[raycun]

Northern Irish parties don't see the need for a message as long as people can decide who to vote for by answering two simple questions - do you identify yourself as Catholic, Protestant, or neither? A little or a lot?

[nwhyte]

I don't think that is quite right. It's a bit odd to use the word "can" as you do - are you suggesting that things would be better if the voters were denied these options?

And in any case, even within those constraints, developing a coherent message is actually very helpful. Looking at the UUP, for instance, they have failed to communicate whether they want to outflank the DUP in the centre or on the harder edge, and as a result remain in the electoral doldrums. In my post I link to a classic example of poor communication from the SDLP. The more dominant parties do have clearer messages, and are surely benefiting as a result.

[raycun]

I was being a little facetious :)

But the problem for the SDLP seems to be that their identity was "the reasonable nationalists". And their message for a long time boiled down to "are you Catholic/nationalist, but disapprove of the IRA? Then vote for us!". And since most people did vote on the basis of being Catholic/nationalist or Protestant/unionist, with economic and other social questions being far behind*, that was all they really needed to say. Do they have a coherent identity beyond that, to serve as the basis of a message?

* you'd know this better than me, of course, so maybe there were lots of people who identified as Protestant/unionists voting for the SDLP because of their tax policies, or C/n voting for the DUP because of their position on contraception?

[ext_2964119]

Thanks for the kind comments.

Your experience about messaging mirrors mine - the Lib Dems used to talk about it very little compared to tactical logistics. The balance is better now though I think still a little lopsided much of the time.