The irrelevance of election campaigns

I suspect Phil Cowley and Rob Ford were gently trolling me when choosing the chapter title (“… the irrelevance of campaigns”) for my contribution to More Sex, Lies and the Ballot Box: Another fifty things you need to know about elections… but to be fair, it is pretty much my point.

General election campaigns don’t matter in the way you*, the media, political parties and most voters think. In fact, once you’ve seen the light you realise that almost all media coverage about elections is wrong as it’s based on a false premise.

Here’s the start of my explanation…

This new book also contains many other much better chapters about how elections really work, plus one I’ve not yet dared look at from Joe Twyman (he has a certain kind of form).

It makes for a great collection of very accessible and fun write-ups of what the hard evidence really shows about how elections and democracy works.

For those other chapters and the rest of my case about how everyone gets elections all wrong, get your hands on your own copy of More Sex, Lies and the Ballot Box: Another fifty things you need to know about elections.

* Unless you are me. Which, unless the world has gone very meta, you are not.