Political

GRAPH: The power of postal voters

Data from the November 2012 Police and Crime Commissioner elections:

PCC elections turnout - November 2012

A stark reminder of how important it is to get supporters of the Liberal Democrats signed up to postal votes.

One response to “GRAPH: The power of postal voters”

  1. This does indeed confirm that postal voters are much more likely to vote, and the PCC election was probably the most extreme example of this that we have.
    However, I would like to challenge the much trumpeted notion that signing people up for postal votes make a dramatic difference to their liklihood to vote.  In my experience, most people who will take the trouble to fill in a postal vote application form, whether at their own initiative or when persuaded to do so, are the sort of people who will always make an effort to vote anyway.  That’s why wider access to postal voting has made no noticeable difference to turnout levels.
    The benefit, therefore, of persuading people to sign up for postal votes is that it makes the polling day shuttleworth shorter, but the price we pay for that is that we have no “telling data” for which postal voters have returned their ballot papers and can only remind them in a very general way.
    I think there are better things we can do with our time than constantly chasing people to sign up for postal votes, which are a much less secure method of voting anyway.

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