I'm increasingly puzzled by a feature of the election leaflets which are being fed through my letterbox with increasing urgency. My local constituency, Watford, is held by the unremarkable junior Justice Minister, Claire Ward, but there were only 1,941 votes between her and the third-placed candidate, Tory Ali Miraj, in 2005, with the Liberal Democrats coming in second. So Watford is a three-way marginal, no question about it.
Yet every time I get a leaflet the parties seem to spend a great deal of space exhorting me to remember that "It's a straight fight between this party and that party - the other party is out."
Now, I understand that PR value of avoiding a split in the vote, but isn't anybody on their teams checking that what they are saying makes any sense before they post these leaflets out?
It's one thing to say "if you vote X, you may split the vote and Y will get in, so vote for Z", but I am sorry to see our three main candidates stuffing their literature with such illogical non-sequiturs as "Because the Conservatives have only four out of forty local council seats, they can't win the Watford parliamentary constituency" and "Only by electing Richard Harrington can you make sure David Cameron forms a government on 7 May".
Listen up: your electorate is not stupid. Just tell us what you want us to do and let us agree or disagree with you.
What's wrong with "If you don't want Claire Ward to get in, vote for Sal Brinton"? Or "Polls show we're ahead - but we need every vote we can get, so please stick with the
Conservatives"? Aren't these messages both simple, and not stupid?
No wonder people get confused about politics. Even our candidates are telling voters that the result of the last county council election have some bearing on the outcome of the general election. Either they believe these untrue things, which is bad, or they are simply choosing
to treat their voters like idiots, which could be worse.
Views and opinions from a moderate viewpoint. We believe in consensus, reason, realism, and common sense. We do not believe in dogma, hysteria, anger, or distorted perspectives. Well, we believe in them, but we don't like them.
1 comment:
I agree completely. I keep getting things from the Lib Dems telling me that "Labour can't win here"... which it turns out is because in the local elections Labour came 4th, and the Lib Dems a close second. As if local elections ever give the same result as Generals.
In the same vein, I've finally had something from our Labour candidate. This tells us that the Lib Dems don't have a prayer because they came a poor 3rd when Labour came within 1000 votes of taking the (Tory) seat. In 1997. That's er (counts fingers) 13 years ago.
So in short, I agree with you: GROW UP!
Actually, in a similar vein but not one worth blogging about (at least, not while I'm meant to be working), I do feel rather swamped, especially in this "tactical voting" thing, by reasons NOT to vote for people, rather than reasons TO vote for people.
Post a Comment