England Swings

Campaigns & Elections,  June, 1997  by Alistair Hodgett,  Keith Tarr-Whelan

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The Labour Party's victory in the 1997 General Election was built upon a disciplined application of new campaign methods. While the obvious parallels between Bill Clinton and Tony Blair have been highlighted, and the national campaign's use of American political techniques was examined closely in the British media, the extent to which these techniques and strategies were applied at the regional and local level determined the extent of Labour's big victory.

In 1992, Labour was widely acknowledged as having won the campaign but lost the election. To some extent this was because while their national campaign excelled, at the local level, campaigns were being waged in a traditional, less effective manner.

Of the Labour Party's 90 targeted "Key Seats," eight were in an area just north of London. These seats, each with about 60,000 voters, provide a measure to which local campaigns were able (or willing) to apply the methods adopted by the national campaign team.

Preparation put Labour into contention in some of these seats despite the fact that the "swing" required was much higher than historical precedent. Notable amongst the long-term organization, which won rewards, was the candidate having personally called several hundred "switcher" voters repeatedly over the six months prior to the election, an effective tactic when 13 seats were lost in 1992 by less than 1,000 votes.

The overriding success story of the campaign at the local level was organization. While the date of the election was of John Major's choosing, Labour's campaign machinery was ready to fight an election from October of 1996 onwards. The campaign structure was tested by an election timed by John Major to run for six weeks rather than the customary three.

One of the greatest differences between U.S. and British campaigns is that British electoral law strictly limits the expenditure in each parliamentary district to approximately $12,000. One of the enduring characteristics of the 1997 campaign was the setting of new records for the use of national and regional operations to side-step these district spending limits.

Billboards in key seats were paid for from national funds but did not run afoul of the law because they did not mention local candidates.

Regional phone banks and rallies also were paid for by the national campaign; the former were crucial to the GOTV effort and the latter central to generating earned media.

The campaign at the local level was divided into message delivery and GOTV. Message delivery took the form of the national message with local context, included in leaflets, the GOTV script for phone banks and letter-writing campaigns.

The level of organization and the willingness to apply new techniques varied enormously between seats, depending upon the candidate, campaign manager and the local party's organizational sophistication. However, the campaign made extensive use of phone bank operations manned by trained volunteers, although it's effectiveness was reduced by the numbers being dialed manually from files which contained many changed or out-of-date numbers. The quality of the voter ID data upon which the phone banks relied varied greatly between districts. The British public has become accustomed to receiving calls from political canvassers.

The focus of the phone banks was in voter ID, GOTV and targeting "switchers" (swing voters) with persuasion scripts. British law prohibits "making a false statement about the personal character or conduct of another candidate," and combined with stronger libel laws, this has prevented so-called "push polling" from making an appearance.

Earned media was generated in each constituency through a well coordinated schedule of voter contact visits by key Members of Parliament, celebrity visits with "switchers" and large scale rallies and Q&A sessions with Party leaders.

In previous elections, the Labour Party had suffered from an inconsistent message when local candidates issued statements at variance with Party policy. Labour's strategy during this campaign was to ensure that national and local messages were in step throughout the campaign. All materials conformed to a national template and the message was strictly controlled. Regional press officers provided daily summaries to campaigners, discussing the appropriate responses to issues in the national media, detailing the daily issue focus and providing sample press releases. A central unit sent an early morning e-mail detailing the campaign's response to news developments.

The "five pledges" of the Tony Blair's national campaign were translated into local terms for each constituency. The message also evolved in content and presentation, starting with "Britain deserves better," which became "Now Vote You Deserve Better" for the final five days.

The materials also switched colors from traditional red and yellow to purple and red for the final five days, with the intent of attracting the attention of a large portion of the electorate which remained undecided prior to the final week.