Quote of the day 14th May 2015

"The ghastly experiment of a core vote strategy didn't even deliver the core vote."

(Alan Milburn on the BBC this week.)

Funny thing, I seem to recall the same thing happened to us when we tried it!

Comments

Jim said…
Do you think any party still has a "core vote"? I am not so sure, I think younger voters are more likely to swing or not turn out.

The parties old "core voters" are dying off.

most of the working population dont remember the 70's, even an old sod like me was only born half way though them.

Yes sure, people say I'm a young person in politics, but at work I am certainly an old sod (Im not quite 40, but its true)
Chris Whiteside said…
A valid point - I certainly don't think any party still has the sort of utterly reliable base that the Labour and Conservative parties used to have.

However, there are still certain sections of the electorate that a traditional right-wing or left-wing campaign is believed to appeal to, and Miliband fought that kind of campaign. It wasn't quite as simple as Blair's words, "A traditional right-wing party competes with a traditional left-wing party with the traditional result" but it was pretty close to that. And it didn't work for them, and more than an equivalent strategy worked for William Hague or IDS.
Jim said…
I saw the elctorate at sixes and sevens to be honest.

I knew the majority would have gone for "damage limitation" it was just a question of numbers. UKIP made it easier by making themselves unelectable. But still it was always the niggling thaought that some people will buy into the snp/lab thing. again it came down to numbers. I always knew this was no tory landslide, but my number crunching paid off in the end.

Sadly I dont have the same faith in the referendum, the "OUT" campaign is too fragmented. I don't hold out much hope right now. But I am nothing if not intellectually honest.

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