Every year in Tamworth we have elections whether that be Borough/District, County, General or in recent times referendums and this means for me delivering leaflets and knocking doors. This year during April I walked 100.1 miles on the 'campaign trail', and as in every year on polling day I spoke to a voter who told me they had not had a leaflet of anyone (I delivered that street myself so I know they did). This and seeing many variations of signage on doors stating 'No cold callers', 'we do not need...', 'No junk Mail', 'posted mail only' etc made me think more and more about how people in 2017 decide who to vote for?
(This is not a politically motivated way of improving my campaigning its a genuine thing I've pondered.)
The picture has changed so much in a relatively short time, I remember electrons when some areas always returned councillors from a particular party and some parties even stopped producing leaflets for these areas. Now I feel society seems to be engaging again in politics and as a result campaigning has changed. It's not only society becoming more engaged there have also been some significant changes, the onset of 24 hour news and of course social media.
24 hour news is a great thing, well I say that. Recently I had a job where I worked nights and slept very little this exposed me to many hours of BBC and Sky news, the repetition was mind numbing and then in a way to stretch the news further there's the whole raft of opinion or editorial pieces thrown in often without clear identification. So no we have opinion and discussion drip feeding into the news and of course discussion and opinion is to an extent reliant on speculation.
Let's not forget the influence of social media!!!! Social media can be a great tool to get a message out to a large number of people. What social media doesn't do is discriminate, anyone can post anything they like via a variety of platforms and once that has been shared a couple of times it's difficult to control and becomes perpetuating, we saw so much incorrect information during the with referrendum and the US presidential election the messages of the conpaigns were often lost but this still influences people's vote.
Just 2 more points I'd like to share before finishing for now.
It is said that parents influence the vote of their offspring until on average the age of 24 where the offspring will decide for themselves.
I saw a news stand/box containing The Sun newspaper last year, on this was printed "The Sun, for Entertainment,gossip,sport". It never mention news anywhere!
I don't want to go into solution mode as I would like to know what other people's thoughts are on voting influence. What makes you vote a particular way?
Leaflets ?
A knock at the door ?
Ever read a manifesto ?
National papers ?
Radio & TV ?
Friends?
Family?
Social media?
I will never make my children vote the way I do. I will always encourage them to make their own mind up. My eldest acts very pro Tory completely unprompted (say when he hears or sees something negative about the Tories) because he probably thinks that it is what I want and expect of him. I tell him to stop as his comments are often generalised without him understanding the facts.
ReplyDeleteAll I've ever heard on the doorstep are comments like "I have to vote Labour or my dad will kill me" in a jokey fashion of course but still worrying none the less. I've never heard a Tory supporter say that and I'd be gutted if I did. I think no matter how much influence there is from the media social or otherwise that people's votes will always be influenced by their parents and hence we've always really had a two party polarity. How someone is brought up stays with them and sets their habits and behaviour for life and isn't really changed or influenced by external factors afterwards.