How to make a difference in the last week of the election
A week to go until the 2019 general election is over. Many postal votes have already been cast but tens of millions of voters are still up for grabs.
What difference can your own personal campaigning make between now and the close of polls? Quite a lot. But all the more so if it’s smart. Which means remembering that in first past the post, winning or losing by 10 votes is massive while 10 votes here or there on a distant third place is nice but minor by comparison.
The difference you can make in a marginal seat with a week of campaigning to go can be massive. Elsewhere, the same amount of effort shifting the same amount of votes is nice, but incidental.
That’s why the closer we get to polling day, the more sense it makes to target efforts very closely in those seats which are looking the closest. There’s a major job to be done all year round building up the party across the whole country. That, though, is a job for the rest of the year. The closer we get to a first-past-the-post polling day, the more important targeting the final extra campaigning becomes.Party members can find out where to help for that final push thanks to the target seat tool on the member-only website.
(When using it, remember that it is based on the party’s latest polling and canvass data and directs people to seats based on that as well as the need to balance our help across different seats in the most effective way possible.)
Of course, there will be hustings that a non-target seat candidate still needs to go to. There will be questions from members of the public that still need answering. And there may be someone who has offered to deliver for the very first time who is best got going with leaflets for their street rather than asked to make a two-hour drive to a target seat.
But always remember: the votes your campaigning can shift could make the difference between winning or losing in a close contest. That’s the way to best fight for the future of liberalism – by ensuring the votes you do win turn into more Liberal Democrat MPs.
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Two concerns about the target seat site. Typically, the Party has created this very important thing and then hidden it on its glitzy, counter-intuitive, garbled website (which a couple of days ago WAS prominently inviting people to help in the Sheffield Hallam by-election – no problem finding that) so it’s extremely difficult to find and few would have found it but for the links in your mailings, Mark.
Also I query how good its information is on travel times. It could be linked to at least a site estimating driving times, but I suspect it’s just on distance. I followed its one recommendation and spent over six hours in the car (rush-hour on the way back, admittedly). Public transport would have been a long haul too. I’m pretty sure there are still target seats that would have saved me a couple of hours. Someone presented with such a single option may well not take it up, whereas if it offered three choices, the activist could use his/her knowledge of train and road routes. Directing activists to where they’re most needed is good, but not if they say “Oh, s** it, going there would be a nightmare” and deliver a few more of the local leaflets instead.