lizw

I spent today at the Autumn Conference of the London Lib Dems. There were a lot of good sessions - speeches by Graham Watson MEP, Chris Huhne and Simon Hughes, lots of discussion about the forthcoming Euro elections, and a consultative session on developing a narrative for the London party that felt like it might be getting somewhere - but the highlight for me was Mark Pack's fringe meeting on lessons to be learned from Barack Obama's campaign, which I thought conveyed a real sense of excitement and innovation. He had nine key points; here are my notes on them (Mark, forgive me if I've got any of this wrong!):

1. Recruit members and helpers and then
2. Give them something fun to do immediately. Ideas from the Obama campaign included "bring your phone" parties and inviting people to a helper's house to watch a relevant TV appearance; failing that, just having a stock of generic leaflets that can be distributed at any time would be a good start, or for instance creating leaflets on transport issues that people could hand out outside their local train station or bus station.

3. Train, train, train. Obama's team offered training to supporters, not just "super-activists"; Mark suggested that for us, a good start would be to offer more training to local campaigners such as Focus deliverers to help them become more involved. For instance, training on how to canvass would be useful for those to whom it does not come naturally. (I agree with this, as someone to whom it is very definitely not natural; when I was an SNP member, I was offered far more training on these very basic things than I have been since joining the LibDems.)

4. Make campaigning more than leafleting. Have a wide range of possible activities people can get involved in, such as writing letters to the local papers, or taking responsibility for a few streets close to their home and reporting any problems (graffiti etc) to the local party.

5. Exciting deadlines and targets. The Obama team gave campaigners interim objectives in addition to the overall objective of winning, which helped maintain engagement and morale. They were helped in this by tax rules that mean the US media take an intense interest in quarterly donation figures, so that the cut-off dates for these provide natural deadlines for fundraising. In the UK, we would need to set our own targets.

6. Collect and keep data. Build up good lists of supporters e-mail addresses and mobile phone numbers and make sure these are properly administered and not lost if the EARS person moves away etc.

7. Use technology - and start texting. Studies in the US showed that doorstep contact had the greatest impact on voters, followed by texts, e-mails and phone calls in that order. The Obama campaign particularly relied on texts because of the very high rate of recipients actually reading these - 80% of campaign texts were read within two minutes of being sent. These can be used to remind people to vote, invite them to events, let them know of upcoming TV appearances, etc. A program is available on the Lib Dem website to assist local parties that want to try this.

8. Build up organisation in weak areas and aim for 100% candidates. Howard Dean convinced the Democrats to campaign across all States. This is even more important for us now that we face PR elections for London and Europe. We only stood in 89% of seats in the 2005 local elections - this creates a bad impression in the minds of voters and makes them less inclined to vote for us, especially in other elections being run at the same time where we do have a candidate. While key activists should concentrate on target areas, it is important also to offer people in "weaker" areas things to do, such as organising petitions, delivering generic leaflets, etc. Once you identify a few reliable people in each area who will do small tasks, key activists only need to take a short time out to drop off leaflets etc with them before returning to the target area. If you get people engaged in their own area at first, it is easier to motivate them to redeploy to a target area as the election gets closer than if you expect them to work outside their own area from the start.

9. Don't believe all the hype - and don't think you have to be able to copy everything. Don't be put off by the greater resources that Obame had - you don't have to be perfect. Also be sceptical of the hype about turnout figures - overall turnout in the US actually only increased by 1%, and the increase is no greater amongst young people (under 30) than amongst the general population. However, within that figure there was a significant shift towards non-white voters (interestingly, primarily amongst Hispanic voters rather than African-Americans.) This shift was probably due to Obama's quality as a candidate rather than any specific campaigning technique. The figure that did show a great increase, however, was people volunteering for a campaign for the first time (partly because Obama successfully created a sense that this election was uniquely important). This will continue to have an effect for some time - Labour created a similar sense in 1997 and attracted a lot of new volunteers, many of whom are still with them today. They would currently be polling much worse than they are without these people.