| Topic: | The challenges of campaigning | |
| Posted by: | Andy Murray | |
| Date/Time: | 20/04/18 16:58:00 |
| I endorse what Guy and Sam have said. When I stood as an independent candidate in 2014 (about which, possibly more elsewhere), I found it very difficult to get the message across to everyone in the Ward. Although almost everyone was polite and friendly (especially when I revealed I wasn't aligned to any Party), houses of 'multiple occupancy', as they are referred to in't Council, were very difficult to leaflet. Being a one-man operation, without a Party machine, I rarely had time to chat anyway and would just politely ask if a resident would like a leaflet, with the hope that they might read it and make me one of their 3 votes. (NB: contrary to what almost all the parties suggest / suggested, you don't need to cast all 3 of your votes for the same party). Since I work, I could only reasonably go out at weekends and in the early evening, so a large proportion of people chose not to answer the door, and I can't say I blame them. But I do think you should be able to meet candidates in the flesh if at all possible, and my concern about not being able to meet flat dwellers is that it may have exacerbated the disconnect that many residents feel between themselves and the Council. Sam was surprised when he learned (after I failed to get elected) that most of the people I did get to speak to were unaware of who represented them. This would partly have been because the incumbents ran a highly-targetted campaign, directed at their own list of committed supporters, and merely had to get the vote out - which they did. The result, however, was that there was a large swathe of residents who may never have been contacted by anyone who was subsequently tasked with representing them. I must say that the literature I have received from the parties vying for my vote this year gives almost no information on what the candidates have actually done for the community in the last 4 years, so if any of them had banged on my door I would certainly have asked them to list any such activity (though I have a fair idea of what the answer is). I would also take issue with some of the, shall we say, imaginative hyperbole on the supposed vote-attracting publicity of a couple of parties... |