From Essex Man to Do-It-All woman, each election's political stereotypes remind us of each period's political precoccupations.
Journalists on both sides of the Atlantic adorn every political period with a stereotyped voter.
America’s soccer moms, and their interest in ‘softer’ issues of education and family income, were the women voters who supposedly elected Bill Clinton. ‘Security moms’, worried about the safety of their kids in the 9/11 world, re-elected George W.
From Orpington Man to Do-It-All Woman
Orpington Man was, perhaps, Britain’s first political stereotype. In 1962 he (and the forgotten women of Orpington) elected Eric Lubbock – the Liberal candidate – in a by-election protest at Harold Macmillan’s Tory government.
Essex Man was supposed to have kept Margaret Thatcher in power. Essex Man was a striving (or ‘battling’) voter. He wasn’t naturally wealthy and hated the taxes and regulations that Labour politicians put in the way of his ambitions to earn money and buy his own home. Essex’s Basildon voters achieved bellwether status when they helped deliver John Major his unexpected election victory of 1992.
Mondeo Man became the symbol of Tony Blair’s 1997 campaign. He, like Essex Man, was inspirational but with a more rounded set of interests. He didn’t just want what was best for him and his immediate family. Mondeo Man also wanted to live in a kinder society and told pollsters that investment in public services should come before tax cuts.
In 2001 the Tories experimented with a whole variety of stereotypes to capture the imagination of commentators and voters. Pebbledash man and Florida woman came and went as quickly as The British Way, the Common Sense Revolution, Kitchen Table Conservatism and William Hague’s other ill-fated attempts at political messaging.
More recently we’ve had Stephen Byers’ Bacardi Breezer generation. These 18-25 year-old clubbers had turned away from politics and needed to be won back.
In 2005 Do-It-All Women have come to the fore. DIA women are aged between 30 and 50 – and have both children and ageing parents. As they look to their kids they think about childcare and education. As a Do-It-All Woman looks to her elderly relatives she worries about the NHS and pensions. She wants action not words and hates yah-boo playground politics.
Targeted campaigns
Although TV, radio and major national newspapers still dominate UK politics – and it is important, therefore, for politicians to develop a message that will appeal to blocks of Essex, Mondeo or Do-It-All voters that such media ‘broad’cast to – the emergence of new technologies gives politicians the opportunity to ’narrow’cast (micro campaign) to a more diverse set of voters.
Through their own or third party internet sites, or via carefully targeted direct mail, a political party can energise voters that are too small in number to be served by the old mainstream media. For example, only a relatively few people really care about human rights abuses in Burma or the survival of a rare mammal. A political party would be foolish to spend a lot of time talking about these issues on BBC1 or in pages of The Sun. But through the right blogs or newsletters a strong message on ‘niche’ issues could swing a decisive number of values and other voters.
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