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Europe is a Vote Winner!
March 21, 2010 2:51 PM
According to a Liberator article, Hammersmith & Fulham Liberal Democrats have found that including Europe and European issues in their normal campaign strategy broadens their appeal and contributes to electoral success. Three years ago, they committed to having at least one article dedicated to a European issue in all their Focuses and campaign leaflets. Pan-European issues like air quality, carbon storage and recycling were given a local slant. This was sometimes easy - air quality resonates with residents up in arms about a third runway at Heathrow - but sometimes more challenging. However, inspiration, facts and figures were all readily available from campaigning Lib Dem MEPs like Chris Davies. Read on:
Jon Burden reports:
"A further boost to our European efforts came when Dinti Batstone was selected as No. 3 European List Candidate for London. She is an energetic campaigner living in our Borough. We decided early on to sign her up to our campaign to elect Lib Dem Councillors in 2010 (in 2006 we had missed by only 29 votes). To this end, we asked Dinti to "do something European" that would fit into our target ward campaign plan. Dinti developed a European Survey with a set of European - as opposed to local - questions. She also came up with a "Euro-quiz" designed to challenge, in a fun way, whether residents can tell "Euro-myth from Euro-fact". The questions were grounded in Lib Dem policy, but designed to counter the scare-stories so often seen in our anti-European press - e.g. a question about immigration highlighted the fact that there are actually more British citizens living in the Costa del Sol than Polish citizens living in London.
To identify pro-Europeans we could target to vote LibDem in the European election, the survey included a direct question: "Do you consider yourself: Very Pro- European, Pro-European, Indifferent, Anti-European".
At first we were a bit hesitant about using the survey. However, several local activists are strongly motivated by Europe, which helped get everyone behind the idea. So we agreed to try out Dinti's survey over a couple of weekends. Our campaign team was very surprised to find that the Euro-survey was just as well received as our standard, very local, Resident Surveys. The return rate was just as high, the questions answered just as thoroughly, and offers of help proffered just as often. In fact, we even managed to get a donation from a pro-European Labour supporter!
Overall, about half of respondents said they are pro-European, a much higher percentage than identified themselves as Lib Dem. Respondents were generally more forthcoming about feelings towards Europe than party affiliation. The quiz seems to have been taken seriously and confirmed how misinformed about Europe many people are. At least one-third of respondents had three out of eight answers wrong.
As Heathrow is such an important local issue, we included a question about using EU air quality rules to stop the third runway. The vast majority of respondents favoured using EU regulations to stop expansion - an issue on which our London MEP Sarah Ludford has campaigned, and a policy position which differentiates us from both Labour and the Tories.
The Euro-survey proved to be win-win for everyone: our local team identified more supporters and deliverers, while Dinti identified pro-Europeans of all parties and none. The responses were very useful in helping us to 'segment' our electorate and tailor our target letters accordingly (pro-Europeans got pro-European target letters, while anti-Europeans got local messages). The experiment also worked at the ballot box. Although we did not get official ward-by-ward breakdowns, careful observation at the verification and count confirmed that the areas where we conducted the Euro-Survey and included European articles in our campaign literature had by far the highest Lib Dem vote in the Borough. Moreover our vote at the European elections was significantly up on our vote in the London Assembly and Mayoral elections in 2008.
We believe this experiment shows that if properly deployed, our pro-European policies can be an asset to local campaigning, helping us bring on board new voters for whom Europe is a positive and galvanizing issue. This may be especially true in cosmopolitan areas like Hammersmith & Fulham which has a very high proportion of non-British born residents, many of whom are registered to vote. In fact, Dinti also ran a London-wide initiative to target non-British EU citizens and found that 42% of canvassed "EU voters" across London said they would definitely or probably vote Liberal Democrat in the European election…. so Europe really can be a vote winner!
If you would like a copy of the European Survey conducted by Dinti see:
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