Computers get into the election act

Press, 25 July 1986, Page 17

Computers get into the election act

Computers are changing the face of British election campaigning. PAUL SULLIVAN, who writes for “Computer Talk”, reports in the London “Observer”.

A new enthusiasm for automating political campaign chores is changing the face of British election strategy.

In the past year, computing power has been used more aggressively than ever by the major parties. All four have computers to deal with their routine administration and office tasks, but now this has progressed into the development of programs and techniques specifically designed for electioneering — along the lines of the United States.

All the parties are using specially tailored software programs to analyse voter groups — and to hunt down the all-import-ant “floating” voters and churn out regular, targeted mailshots. Work in the Liberal camp in the run-up to the Newcastle-under-Lyme by-election, for example, isolated the “church” group. A spokesman explained that people who can be spotted from the electoral roll with having some connection with the Church, or with religious organisations, are an ideal group to receive letters with a “moral” angle on political issues. The Fulham by-election in April saw a major leap in the use of computers by British political parties. It signalled the victorious Labour Party’s entrance into the direct mail and targeting game, and marked the start of their serious development and testing of electronic electioneering methods.

Labour stalwarts have consistently resisted the use of computers for anything other than routine administration tasks, but early this year they hired a computer expert, John Mends. Mends, a committed Labour Party supporter, left his job with Logica as a senior project leader to head the party’s computer operations. He says that there were some people in the party who needed the Fulham victory to convince them that computers really were

useful in politics. “I think many people worry about computers and rightly so. Unlike the other parties, Labour does not intend to create a massive, centralised database of members, for instance. First of all it would not be practicable, and it just isn’t the way Labour wants to go.” But Labour is enthusiastic about direct mail techniques and does use commercial and donated lists of names for mailshots. If you signed a petition to support the miners, for example, you might well receive requests for donations to Labour.

The Liberals’ victory in the Brecon and Radnor by-election in July, 1985, is still the trophy on the wall they use to support their growing use of computers. In those campaigns, wavering Tory hill-farmers became the target for a stream of “personalised” letters from the Liberal candidate, Richard Livsey, who fuelled their doubts about Tory agriculture policy. The Liberal computer chief is Bill McCormick, who agrees that he is not typical of the sort of computer people the other parties are recruiting. Until two years ago he had never touched a computer. He became convinced that there had to be a place for computers in election work when he was an agent in the London local elections in 1984. He went out and bought a microcomputer. Now he is the Liberal Party computer co-ordinator and organiser of their user groups, Micro Lib.

“We don’t use bought-in commercial lists of names,” says McCormick. “We simply don’t

have the money. In the Brecon and Radnor election, the campaign managers identified the hill farmers as a good target. At the time we didn’t have a program that could extract them from the electoral roll, so we did it manually.” Six hundred personalised letters were laser-printed at head office, delivererd to campaign headquarters, and then posted. The result, says McCormick, is history. Now, he adds, they have a program that can do the same job automatically. In the West Derbyshire and Ryedale by-elec-tions, in May, the Liberals’ computers sifted through the computerised electoral roll and flagged every address containing the word “farm,” thus completely automating the process. The Tories say little about what they are doing with their election systems. McCormick says they had early upsets with direct mail techniques, and personalised letters to possible Tory voters were compiled from canvas returns. Unfortunately, too many Mrs Smiths were promised that a vote for Thatcher would mean the leak in the roof would be repaired.

McCormick also believes that lists of the new wave of small shareholders, in companies like British Telecom, would be likely groups to find their way on to Central Office databases.

The Social Democratic Party is the newest party, and for that reason the envy of the rest in terms of computer potential.

Unlike Labour and Conservative, the S.D.P. is able to start from scratch with their computerised central membership

It means its officials can control their unique centralised subscription system and control the constituencies far more than the other parties. They use the same Alliance election programme as the Liberals, but the S.D.P.’s computer chief, Andy Murray, says they do buy in commercial lists of names and cross-refer-ence them against membership lists and other breakdowns.

He is aggressively confident about the future of the S.D.P. computer operation. “We’re going straight to the electors — not just target groups, but right down to the individuals, right down to what concerns them.” That is one of the benefits often claimed for political computing. In a marginal by-election, or even a general election, all the parties are fully aware that computers have provided them with hitherto impossible opportunities.

They allow the campaign managers to head-hunt the “floating” voter group and to hit them hard with promises that their particular concerns will only be answered by voting one way.

Observers of the British political system, like Richard Rose, Professor of Public Policy at Strathclyde University, see it as a good development. “First of all it makes the parties think about the electorate and about what actually concerns them. The other thing it does is actually provide the voter with more information. That has to be a good thing.”

On the other side is the view that with all the potential computers could bring to the democratic process, all they are being used for is to generate political junk mail. There’s the danger that the blind struggle to get into power will be the result of having made so many conflicting promises, that manifestoes will mean even less.