ConservativeHome's Election Review

Election debates may have shielded Tories from Labour pounding, claims Osborne

By Tim Montgomerie

The consensus is that the decision to agree to three TV debates, with the third party Liberal Democrats enjoying equal status, hurt the Tories at the General Election.

It's the view of ConHome's General Election Review.

It's the view of Lord Ashcroft.

It's the view of research from Deloitte.

And it's the view of 91% of Tory candidates that "the election debates gave the Liberal Democrats by-election status, and disrupted an already disjointed Tory campaign".

The people in charge of the Tory campaign refuse to join the consensus, however. Privately they have argued that without the debates Labour would have had much more oxygen of publicity for their attacks on the Tories as "cutters".

George Osborne, co-ordinator of the Tory election campaign has gone on-the-record with this view for Dennis Kavanagh and Philip Cowley's British General Election of 2010, published later this month by Palgrave. This is what Kavanagh and Cowley write:

“In an implied admission that the media attention on the debates – preparations, build-up and post-debate analysis – squeezed the amount of discussion of policies a senior Conservative admitted: ‘We were quite happy with the coverage, thank you very much. Without the coverage of the debates and the process we’d have had days of Labour exploiting the voters’ fears of us.’ George Osborne thought the media interest on process protected his party ‘from weeks of heavy Labour pounding over issues like tax credits’. Labour strategists, aware of this, were frustrated. Osborne had been stung by the success of Labour tactics in the 2001 and 2005 elections when they had exploited voters’ fears of Conservative ‘cuts’. This time, ‘we killed off Brown’s tax and spend line’, he said”.

Without the debates the contest would certainly have been more of a two horse race and it will always be a moot point whether the Tory attack on Labour's record would have been heard more loudly than Labour's fear-mongering.

> On CentreRight yesterday, Tom Greeves argued that debates are an irreversibly good thing for democracy but that Cameron was ill-prepared by his team for them.

Lord Ashcroft praises Cameron as the man who "rescued the Conservative Party" but criticises the electoral strategy that meant he did not win Commons majority

By Tim Montgomerie

The Sunday Telegraph leads this morning with an exclusive preview of Lord Ashcroft's review of Tory election performance. The Tory peer makes the following key conclusions about the Tory campaign:

THE RESULT WAS DISAPPOINTING

Lord Ashcroft: "The result of the 2010 election was closer than many had expected – closer than Conservatives had hoped for. Many people, including me, were disappointed. The Conservative Party faced a shambolic government, an unpopular Prime Minister, a recession, a huge budget deficit and an overwhelming national desire for change. A year before the election the Conservatives were 20 points ahead in the polls, yet they failed to win an overall majority. Surely this had been an open goal."

LABOUR'S ATTACKS WORKED BECAUSE THE CAMERON CAMPAIGN HAD NOT ESTABLISHED A CLEAR IDEA OF WHAT THE CONSERVATIVES WOULD DO IN GOVERNMENT

Lord Ashcroft: "Going into the election, many voters had little clear idea of what we stood for or what we intended to do in government. At a national level, too much of our message was focused on unnecessary and counterproductive attacks on Gordon Brown and Labour, which meant that voters were not clear about our own plans. We did not make as much progress as we should have done in transforming the party's brand, and in reassuring former Labour voters that we had changed and were on their side. This in turn gave Labour's scare campaigns about Conservative plans more resonance than they would otherwise have had, and meant that, for many, voting Conservative was a much harder decision than it might have been."

BECAUSE CCHQ HAD NOT ESTABLISHED THE CONSERVATIVES AS THE PARTY OF CHANGE, THE DEBATES GAVE NICK CLEGG AN OPPORTUNITY TO DO SO FOR THE LIBERAL DEMOCRATS

Lord Ashcroft: "Voters who had been reluctantly concluding that they were going to have to grit their teeth and vote Conservative now found that a more palatable alternative also seemed more credible than they had previously thought. The impact would have been much less if we had already been where we should have been in the public mind. The debates were arguably a tactical error which exposed a strategic problem: three weeks before the election the market was still wide open for a party of change. Nick Clegg was only able to appropriate the territory of 'real change' because we did not dominate it ourselves."

WITHOUT THE BATTLEGROUND SEATS CAMPAIGN (OVERSEEN BY LORD ASHCROFT) DAVID CAMERON WOULD NOT NOW BE PRIME MINISTER

Lord Ashcroft: "There is clear evidence that the Conservative Party's target seats campaign made a decisive difference to the outcome of the election. We won 32 seats that needed a swing higher than the 4.9 per cent national average we achieved from Labour, or the 1.4 per cent from the Liberal Democrats. Without these, Labour would almost certainly still be in government as the largest party in the House of Commons. In our core battleground target seats we achieved swings well above the national average both against Labour and the Liberal Democrats."

REBABILITATION OF THE TORY BRAND CAN BE COMPLETED IN GOVERNMENT

Lord Ashcroft: "It is only in government that the Conservative Party can complete the rehabilitation of its brand – that it can show doubtful voters that it really is on the side of ordinary people, that it is competent to run the economy, and that it can be trusted with public services like the NHS. The offer to work with the Liberal Democrats, and the way David Cameron and his team conducted themselves in the uncertain days after the election, were dramatically at odds with the public view of politicians as childish partisans. Of his many qualities, the one which will serve David Cameron best as Prime Minister is his judgment. From the day he was elected leader, he has in the main made the right calls when it mattered most. In doing so he has rescued the Conservative Party."

***

Lord Ashcroft has said that the report is meant to be a constructive contribution to improving Tory performance in future. "I want to help learn the lessons that will lead to the Conservatives once again being elected to govern with an overall majority," he said. He takes the opportunity of his interview with The Sunday Telegraph to express disappointment at the party's handling of his own announcement of his non-dom status:

"I think they could have mounted a more spirited defence of the situation. It did prove to me that the Labour Party attack team was much more effective than the Conservative Party defence team. The negotiations [in 2000] with the [Labour] Government for me to join the House of Lords did not include any commitment on my part to be taxed on my worldwide income."

***

Lord Ashcroft has decided to pull out of the ConservativeHome fringe meeting at the Tory Conference where the election campaign is due to be discussed. He wants his 'Minority Verdict' report to be his last word on the result. The event will still go ahead, however, and all people who have booked to attend will receive a free, signed copy of his analysis by way of apology.

If you have not booked and would like a copy of the report please go to Lord Ashcroft's website.

Nigel Huddleston: New Survey confirms the Leaders' debates had a significant impact on voting intentions

Nigel Huddleston is a Director in the Strategy practice of Deloitte and was the parliamentary candidate for Luton South in the last election.

The results of a Deloitte/YouGov survey of more than 2,000 UK adults add statistical support to what many of us already suspected and what ConservativeHome has already reported: The TV debates were the dominant feature of the election and may have single-handedly altered the outcome. 

Several polls immediately following the debates showed a substantial boost for Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats, and this new survey confirms that actual voting behaviour was indeed impacted by the debates - though perhaps not as spectacularly as some snap polls suggested at the time of the debates.

Key findings of the survey are as follows:

TV versus other media

• Television was the dominant and preferred medium for voters in learning about the election. 76% of respondents said they used TV to learn about the election, 49% national newspapers, 23% local newspapers, 29% national radio, 14% local radio, 25% leaflets and 33% discussions with friends and family. Just 16% said party manifestoes, and 7% door to door campaigning by politicians. 41% of respondents said TV was the single most influential source on their voting decision.

TV debates impacted turnout

• 53% of those who watched the leaders' debates said they impacted the way they chose to vote (68% of 18-24 year olds). The leaders' debates had double the impact on the voting decisions of the younger (18-24) versus older (55+) demographic group, and twice the impact in the East of England versus Scotland and Northern Ireland. The survey revealed that the leaders' debates were more than five times more influential than party political broadcasts in influencing voting decisions.
• The most common 'impact' on viewers was for the debates to entrench their existing voting intention, but the debates also appear to have contributed to increasing voter turnout - especially amongst the young, in Scotland and in London.
• 4% of viewers (7% in London) said the debates had encouraged them to vote when they had previously decided not to vote at all.

TV debates impacted the young most

• 17% of those who watched the debates said that the debates had changed their opinion of the leaders - and this impact was almost twice as strong with younger than older voters.

TV debates impacted some voting intentions

• Perhaps most significantly, 6% of viewers said that the leaders' debates caused them to change the political party they had otherwise intended to vote for.  The regions where this impact was strongest were: Wales and the Midlands; and the least: Scotland, London and the South.
• There was a social as well as age and regional aspect to the impact of the debates. The leaders' debates cemented the voting choices of ABC1 viewers to a greater degree than C2DE viewers, and persuaded more C2DE viewers than ABC1 viewers to change the political party they wished to vote for.

The average constituency size at the last election was about 70,000 voters with an average turnout of about 46,000. The results of this survey would suggest that in an average UK constituency, the debates motivated hundreds of voters to vote when they otherwise would not have done, and hundreds more altered their voting intentions as a result of watching the debates.

When you remember that the Conservatives won 16 seats by less than 1,000 votes, and didn't win 12 seats by less than 1,000 votes (the most marginal 21 Tory targets being lost by less than 20,000 votes in total), it seems reasonable to conclude that the leaders' debates may well have altered the outcome of the entire election.

Whether the debates will be similarly impactful at the next election remains to be seen.  But they are almost certainly here to stay.  The TV networks loved them, the political commentators were enthralled by them, and the public were engaged and motivated by them.  

Only 17% of survey respondents said the debates should not be held in the future, whereas 42% said they should occur during - but only during - general election campaigns, while 29% of respondents said they would also like to see leaders' debates at least once a year or more between elections.

***

About the research
Statistics outlined in this article are taken from a survey conducted by YouGov, based on a question set written by Deloitte, amongst 4,199 UK adults (aged 18 years plus). The sample of 4,199 respondents was split at the beginning of the survey in order that half completed the first module of questions and half completed the second. This was implemented to ensure quality of response throughout the entire questionnaire. Fieldwork was conducted between 9th and 12th July 2010. The survey was conducted using an online interview, amongst members of the YouGov panel of individuals who have consented to take part in surveys. Respondents were sampled/weighted to reflect the UK population, based on the following criteria: age, gender, social grade, region and newspaper readership. Population figures used for sampling/weighting were sourced from the Office for National Statistics and National Readership Survey data.

About Deloitte
In this press release references to Deloitte are references to Deloitte LLP, which is among the country's leading professional services firms. The information contained in this press release is correct at the time of going to press.

The 1922 want YOUR views on the General Election campaign

By Tim Montgomerie

ConservativeHome has conducted its own Election Review on these pages.

We hope to hear from Lord Ashcroft about his own inquiry at ConHome's special fringe event at the Birmingham Tory Conference.

The 1922 Executive has asked me to post this on their behalf...

"We have been asked by the Chairman of the 1922 Committee to conduct an independent review of the General Election. This is not intended for publication, and will be fed into the main Party Review.

In both the short and long campaigns, it will consider MPs’ and candidates’ experience of:

Air War and Ground War;

Safe and Marginal Seats.

We intend to complete the report by the autumn of this year, and hope to interview people at Conference or sooner. We are happy to hear from agents, Councillors, and activists, but our specific focus will be on MPs and candidates.

The final report will be considered by the 1922 Executive.

This review is a constructive exercise. It hopes to highlight the many strengths and achievements of the 2010 campaign, and to build positively upon them. It will assess good practice and innovation by candidates, MPs, and CCHQ, and make concrete suggestions for the next General Election.

If you are willing to take part, or want to share a successful campaigning idea, anecdote, or any comments, please write to [email protected].

Yours sincerely,
1922 Executive."

We should have won - but the last election wasn't fought in perfect electoral conditions

By Paul Goodman

I worked with Tim on ConservativeHome's General Election review.  So it's scarcely surprising that I agree with its main conclusions.  The campaign was good on the ground, poor at the centre.  To concede three election debates with Clegg was a blunder.  The manifesto should have pushed a retail offer to voters, not floated a general idea (and one, furthermore, that hadn't been focus group-tested).

Immigration and welfare reform were pushed too late.  This was at least partly because Team Cameron was "fighting the last war" - pushing a "decontamination strategy" when voters were ready to hear a Conservative message.  More evidence for this turned up last weekend, in the form of the £300,000 adverts that showed people "coming out" as Tories.

We should have won.  It's bad for Britain that we didn't.  And it's well worth continuing to hold the Party leadership to account over it - not least to try to ensure that the same errors aren't repeated next time round.   It's true, as Tim writes, that "electorates have become much more volatile" and that "every week we read of politicians (and people from all walks of life) enjoying the highest or lowest ratings ever. It is much easier to achieve large swings than in the past".

Tories ditched £300,000 election ads that included gay shower scene

By Tim Montgomerie

The Sunday Times (£) reports that CCHQ commissioned and paid for a party election broadcast that portrayed people 'coming out' as Conservatives:

"One of the suppressed films that have now emerged shows naked men grappling in a shower, while another depicts a teenager being caught reading what at first appears to be a top shelf magazine. The third unshown ad makes light of teenage sex, portraying a girl confessing to her parents: “I am three months Conservative.”

The Sunday Times says that the ads were dropped for fear of a public backlash. My understanding is a little different. Senior Tories felt that the ads commissioned by Steve Hilton were at best out-of-date and at worst self-loathing. The opponents of the ad campaign felt that the 'decontamination phase' had gone on far too long and we needed to give people positive reasons for voting David Cameron and not to give people a new opportunity to think of Conservatives as the 'nasty party'.

The true cost of these ads is debated. The Sunday Times puts the cost at £100,000. Fraser Nelson has previously mentioned a £500,000 cost of ditched ads that until now we did not know the content. My source has talked of a £300,000 cost but it was submerged in the overall payments to Euro RCSG, the party's main creative agency.

The Coalition is forcing all government departments to publish all expenditures of £25,000 and more. Perhaps a similar commitment is needed for CCHQ expenditure - not necessarily at an election time for fear of giving opponents too much information. But if CCHQ knew that it had to publish its full accounts it might spend donors' money more wisely.

12.30pm Iain Martin's reaction: " a significant Tory party donor said to me recently that he was reluctant to hand the party another check until he got a guarantee that the next Tory election campaign will be run on a completely different basis from that of this year. He said that if he ran his business in that way — with no clear strategy, multiple chiefs and a lack of strong leadership at HQ — he would expect to go bust pretty quickly. He cited the ads, mentioning a figure north of £400,000, and said: “Have they any idea how hard I and other people had to work to earn the money we gave them, so that they could waste it making silly films that weren’t good enough to be shown to the voters?”

Cameron's smokescreen must not hide true reasons for election failure

By Tim Montgomerie

Yesterday, the London Evening Standard's Paul Waugh reported that David Cameron was warning that a lurch to the Right would not have won the last General Election. Jonathan Isaby's own review of the Prime Minister's talk to defeated candidates is here.

Frankly, talking of a lurch to the Right is a straw man argument. It is a smokescreen that is intended to hide the real reasons why the Tories didn't successfully seize the best opportunity we had in a generation to win a majority.

In ConHome's review of the election there is only one conclusion which can be fairly presented as urging a Right-wards move. That is our observation that issues like immigration and welfare reform were under-used. I'll always be puzzled as to why a day of the election was dedicated to the launch of an already-forgotten schools music competition but the potent issue of immigration never got a day's billing.

But the bigger arguments in the election review were about professionalism and proper process rather than ideology:

• The election debates gave the Liberal Democrats by-election status, and disrupted an already disjointed Tory campaign (91% of candidates agreed);
• The Big Society agenda is an exciting governing philosophy but it should never have been put at the heart of the Tory election campaign (71% of candidates agreed);
• The Conservatives stopped losing on the economy but they didn't develop a strong or consistent economic message (70% of candidates agreed);
• The Conservatives never developed an overall strategic message for the General Election (62% agreed).

ConHome's inside story of the election campaign points to lack of clear decision-making (which meant no clear theme was ever decided upon); a poor use of polling (which meant the Big Society was never market tested); and a failure to weaponise or retail-ise policies (with the exception of the last minute pledge on cancer drugs, the hugely expensive NHS pledge, for example, was not turned into doorstep policies) until the Contract was unveiled.

The other issue was trustworthiness. Cameron's ratings started falling on trust immediately after the Lisbon policy decision. Not because of the Europe issue, necessarily, but because voters - led by newspapers like the Mail, accused Cameron of being like other politicians. This reputation was reinforced by a lack of directness on issues like the deficit.

Another red herring regularly proposed in this debate is the idea that Cameron's swing was comparable to Thatcher's in 1979. 1979, to state the obvious, was 31 years ago. In those years electorates have become much more volatile. Every week we read of politicians (and people from all walks of life) enjoying the highest or lowest ratings ever. It is much easier to achieve large swings than in the past. 

I'm determined to keep making these arguments until Downing Street faces up to what happened in the election campaign. Until it does we cannot be confident that the next election will produce a better performance.

> Come to the ConHome Review of the Election fringe meeting at Party Conference. Speakers: Lord Ashcroft, James Forsyth, Iain Martin, Tim Montgomerie and Fraser Nelson.

Cameron spent £111 getting every extra Conservative vote

The Times' Guide to the House of Commons has just been published. It's well worth buying. As well as profiles of every MP it includes a number of interesting essays on the state of politics and the election campaign.

One snippet that interested me was Sam Coates' calculation of the cost of the Tory campaign:

"In [David Cameron's] four years as Leader of the Opposition, from January 2006 to May 6, 2010, a record £122 million went through Tory coffers, by any international political yardstick an extraordinary amount.  Barack Obama’s presidential campaign committee in 2008 raised £450 million.  That was to fund a campaign that won decisively in a country where campaigns hinge on TV advertising and with an electorate five times the size.  In domestic terms this figure is also striking;  Labour’s income was £71 million over the same period, although £22 million of this came while Tony Blair was still in office.  It also beats sums raised in previous Parliaments; the Tories’ income was £49 million and Labour’s £61 million between 2001 and 2005.

Perhaps more intriguing is the limited impact that this vast spending appeared to have.  By Mr Cameron’s own yardstick, set in a Spectator interview shortly before polling day, his own campaign was a failure.  The Conservative vote increased by 3.8 percentage points on its 2005 vote; an increase of 2 million votes net, or, taking in account the higher number of votes received by rival parties, 1.1 million more than last time.  In other words, every additional vote cost the Tories £111.

What is more, for the shrewd financial investor, the archetype of the modern Tory donor, the way the Conservative Party operated under the stewardship of Andy Coulson, Steve Hilton and ultimately George Osborne as general election co-ordinator, must have seemed horrific.  At a national level, half a million pounds was gambled on cinema advertisements that were never shown, £400,000 on a January 2010 “cut the deficit not the NHS” poster campaign later disowned by some senior figures.   About half a million was spent on a much–ridiculed “don’t be a tosser” campaign on the national debt and the same sum again on a national newspaper campaign to recruit internet “friends of the Conservatives”, which was never mentioned again by the leadership."

Tim Montgomerie

Tory candidates agree with all conclusions of ConservativeHome's General Election Review

A PDF is now available of ConservativeHome's General Election Review. Click here to view.

In the last 48 hours ConservativeHome invited Tory candidates to say whether they agreed or disagreed with the key conclusions of our General Election Review. 109 candidates took part. 60 candidates who had been unsuccessful and 49 who had been successfully elected. The two sets of candidates did not answer the questions in significantly different ways. Their responses are listed below with those most supported at the top of the list.

The election debates gave the Liberal Democrats by-election status, and disrupted an already disjointed Tory campaign

• Agree: 91% / Disagree 2%

The Conservative Party enjoys a massive financial advantage over Labour and the Liberal Democrats

• Agree 78% / Disagree 11%
  

Tax cuts twice reversed slides in the Conservatives' opinion poll rating

• Agree: 77% / Disagree 10%

The Big Society agenda is an exciting governing philosophy but it should never have been put at the heart of the Tory election campaign

• Agree: 71% / Disagree 15%

The Conservatives stopped losing on the economy but they didn't develop a strong or consistent economic message

• Agree: 70% / Disagree 17%

Team Cameron's success with the Murdoch empire could not compensate for continuing difficulties with the BBC

• Agree: 65% / Disagree 22%
  

This election was the Conservative party's best opportunity in a generation and with a strong campaign it should have been won

• Agree: 63% / Disagree 23%

The Tory silence on the electorate's second biggest issue, immigration, was like Manchester United leaving Wayne Rooney on the substitutes' bench

• Agree: 63% / Disagree 28%

The Conservatives never developed a strategic message for the General Election

• Agree: 62% / Disagree 22%

The Conservative Party fought a good ground war, winning more seats than the average national swing would suggest

• Agree: 55% / Disagree 22%

Having two young and broadly similar politicians at the top of the Party remains problematic

• Agree 51% / Disagree 44%
  

No party ran a campaign responsive to the seismic impact of the expenses scandal - and to the prevailing mood of disillusion with Westminster politics

• Agree: 51% / Disagree 45%

Because the Conservatives didn't fight Brown with the same ferocity that Blair fought John Major, Labour survived electorally

• Agree 47% / Disagree 44%

Tim Montgomerie

The party must be careful about the implications of the failure to break through in Scotland, among public sector workers and in seats with large numbers of ethnic voters

ConservativeHome's General Election Review (executive summary here/ contents page here), concluded with ten recommendations.

One of CCHQ's big conclusions about the General Election campaign is that the party's greatest electoral failure was in not breaking through in Scotland, amongst public sector workers and with ethnic minority voters. This General Election Review has already examined this here.

One of the biggest decisions the party has to now take is the extent to which the party can ever win a majority if it does not break through into these three groups. The default response from Team Cameron seems to be that these groups have to be wooed. That's one explanation for the fact that Cameron's first visit as Prime Minister was to Scotland. There's certainly more that can be done. My understanding is that Conservative HQ had no defined strategy for ethnic minority communities throughout the last two years. Such a defined relationship-building strategy would be the job of a professional External Relations operation.

It is important, however, that CCHQ does not rush into the belief that converting Scotland and public sector workers is the easiest route to majority status. “All sensible marketing strategies focus on the most receptive customers, not the least receptive customers,” said one Tory insider. Would the party be better choosing to target more campaigning efforts on English constituencies and highly-taxed private sector workers? There is certainly a danger that the Conservatives will shower 'goodies' on voters that won't convert to the Conservative Party but the cost of those 'goodies' will alienate English, private sector supporters.