The dangers of being spread too thick and thin
The danger for the Conservatives is that they are spread too deep, while the challenge for Labour is to make sure that they’re not spread too shallow. I’ll explain what I mean.
Going into any election all parties have their target seats - the ones where they pile all their energy, visits, and resources into. The criteria for deciding these things is an inexact science but the most important criteria is the parties’ relative position in the polls.
Under the new parliamentary boundaries, and using notional results from 2019, Labour needs to win 125 to have a majority of one seat in Parliament. That would mean that their targeting is aimed at those seats that get them over the line.
The Conservatives have to lose no more than 46 seats to have a majority of one.
In normal circumstances Party workers in safer seats are allocated to the nearest marginal constituencies, where they are expected to spend most of their campaigning time.
But in a contest where there’s such a significant poll lead for one party, it can sometimes be difficult to maintain strategic prioritisation. It’s already the case that some Tory MPs and volunteers are refusing to help in more marginal neighbouring seats because they fear that the polls mean that they will lose their own safer seat. It’s human instinct to behave in this way, but effectively it means giving up on those marginal seats that the Party needs to hold to retain power. It will lead to the Tories being spread too thick in such a small number of seats that they don’t have a route to victory.
For Labour the opposite is the case because their significant poll lead impacts on which additional seats are in play. Like all parties, Labour switches people and resources into the seats that can be won with a little extra effort. And right now some in the Party will have an unrealistic sense of what is winnable. Being so far ahead in the polls convinces some activists that their own unwinnable seat is winnable. Just like the Tory activists, they too decide to stay in their own seat. Labour will want to make sure that they are not spread too thinly across too many seats.
I’ll finish with a cautionary note about the limits of the science of political prioritisation. It is this: when the mood changes, there’s little you can do. Back in the Tony Blair 1997 landslide, we had no idea we were winning my constituency, which Labour hadn’t won for seventy years. I held the seat until 2015 when again the mood (in Scotland post-referendum) had switched. If, and it’s too early to be certain, this is a moment of national shared political zeitgeist around Labour’s ‘Change’ message then the Parties’ prioritisation models simply don’t apply.
Founder Director at Message Matters
1wI tried hard not to take that personally. 😂