Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • The Guardian

    How the Tory election machine fell apart

    The conventional wisdom is that the Conservatives are good at elections. Last month they failed spectacularly. But do recriminations about negative tactics mask deeper problems for a party that hasn’t won convincingly since the Thatcher era?
    by Andy Beckett Jun 26, 2017 8 minutes
    In the 2017 general election, an anticipated landslide turned in a few weeks into no majority at all.

    In September 2015, a few months after the Conservatives had won that year’s general election, more comfortably than even their most optimistic supporters had hoped, a veteran Tory politician and journalist was waiting to appear on a BBC radio show. Still smiling about the election, he was in expansive mood. The party’s targeting of voters had become so precise, he told me, thanks to the latest marketing software, that it would take Labour many years to catch up.

    During this year’s general election, as in 2015, Tory activists across Britain were supplied with computer-generated lists of amenable voters by Conservative campaign headquarters in London. But this time, many canvassers got a shock when they knocked on doors. “The data was only 65% accurate,” says a local Tory organiser who has worked in the party’s heartlands in southern England for decades. “In the marginals, it was less than 50%.” In some cases, canvassers were accidentally sent to the addresses of activists for rival parties. The organiser says: “I despair of our national campaign.”

    Theresa May meeting voters , during the 2017 general election campaign.
    A voter in Abingdon, Oxfordshire, confronts Theresa May over disability benefit cuts during the 2017 general election campaign. Photograph: Stefan Rousseau/PA

    The idea that the Conservatives are good at general elections is one of the least-challenged conventional wisdoms of British politics. A large and loyal core vote; copious party funds; flexible beliefs; disciplined campaign messaging; slick presentation; an utter lack of squeamishness about going negative; the relentless support of most of the press; an ability

    You’re reading a preview, subscribe to read more.

    More from The Guardian

    The Guardian4 min read
    ‘Everyone Owns At Least One Pair’: $75bn Sneaker Industry Unboxed In Gold Coast Exhibition
    What was the world’s first sneaker? Was it made in the 1830s, when the UK’s Liverpool Rubber Company fused canvas tops to rubber soles, creating beach footwear for the Victorian middle class? Or was it a few decades later, about 1870, with the invent
    The Guardian4 min read
    Lawn And Order: The Evergreen Appeal Of Grass-cutting In Video Games
    Jessica used to come for tea on Tuesdays, and all she wanted to do was cut grass. Every week, we’d click The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker’s miniature disc into my GameCube and she’d ready her sword. Because she was a couple of years younger than m
    The Guardian4 min read
    ‘Almost Like Election Night’: Behind The Scenes Of Spotify Wrapped
    There’s a flurry of activities inside Spotify’s New York City’s offices in the Financial District. “It’s almost like election night,” Louisa Ferguson, Spotify’s global head of marketing experience says, referring to a bustling newsroom. At the same t

    Related Books & Audiobooks