Labour's quiet digital revolution

Puzzled at the Tories' reputation for online savviness given Conservative activists' evident unhappiness with their system, Merlin, Jessica Asato points out Labour has long been forging ahead in the online arena

I've just got round to properly reading James Crabtree's fascinating article about the Tories' digital strategy for the election which comes out in Wired Magazine today. (Given how much time I spend thinking about Twitter and e-campaigning I guess I should become an official geek and start to subscribe!)

It's funny how things work out in politics. In the same week that the Ashcroft story finally goes nuclear, we also get to see exactly what he's been using his money (which should have gone in taxes) to fund. Ever since his report on the Tories' electoral demise, Smell the Coffee, he has been at the forefront of the Conservative Party's strategy to win back power. In that document he outlined his analysis of Tory misfortune which for him was "its brand". So it's no surprise that, backed by his money, the Tories have undergone one of the biggest brand decontamination exercises since Skoda. Along the way they have associated with sexy brand names such as Google, Facebook and set up meetings with LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman and Mitchell Baker, the chair of Mozilla, which produces Firefox. As rebranding goes, they've thrown the kitchen sink at it.

As a result, they have an election operation which seems more targeted and better organized than in 2005. Let's be fair, for a good while, the Tories' online operation was much more slick than Labour's. Their website still has a greater depth of policy information on it and is more navigable. But if you look at the real nuts and bolts of their campaign, have they really built something which outshines Labour's? Alex Smith has already written how despite all the talk, Labour's systems engage more members and allow activists more contact with voters, than the Tories' ones.

But it's the slightly over-egged reporting of the Tories' new Merlin system in the Wired article which rang bells with me. The telling sentence for me was that the Tory candidate for Dover (surely a target seat) "had not yet begun to use Merlin in his local campaign".

This chimes with intelligence those on the Labour side have had for a while. Labour's techy team have been keeping tabs on what Tory activists have to say about their shiny new systems, and they are less upbeat.

Here's just a few mentions of Merlin from ConservativeHome last year

CCHQ's Merlin is a piece of c*** which is far behind our rivals and will lose us seats that should have been won.
Posted by: HF | March 14, 2009 at 08:07

Given the mess CCO has made of Merlin we should be grateful for them not doing any more internetty things.
Posted by: DCMX | March 02, 2009 at 16:59

About 7 months ago I wrote on here about the terrible computer system and since then things are not much better.
With the pressure off David Cameron should have one priority and that is to sort out the failing Merlin computer system. It cost us council seats in the recent locals. Has anyone told him that? Caroline Spellman seems blissfully unaware of the disastrous computer project.
Posted by: jim | May 19, 2008 at 17:43

These were a while ago, so maybe things have moved on since then? Err, not according to that scourge of the right, Melanie Philips just yesterday:

"I was told only this week by a mole in one of these mythical marginals that there was a serious glitch in the computer software being used, which made hook-ups between different computer systems particularly difficult and was preventing the devilishly focused targeting of voters on which so much hope was being pinned."

Labour meanwhile, though sadly with no drum roll in the digital press, successfully rolled out its ContactCreator system two years ago. Yes there were a few teething troubles but now the responses to the 100,000 plus doorstep conversations volunteers from across the country are having are loaded onto the party's national online voter database, and party bosses in London can, in real time, see and analyse the results. I use it as a council candidate and after every campaigning session I dutifully enter in the responses from residents in my ward as to their voting intention and other issues they raise on the doorstep.

Every day the results are loaded against a wealth of demographic data such as Experian's Mosaic segmentation system, ethnicity and specific lists of data such as working mums and housing types which Labour has acquired in the commercial sector. The Wired piece describes it as "a complex ‘people classification system'". Well it may be complex, but it's what we've been using in the Labour party for yonks!

Reports are produced for key politicians and the election strategists get to work profiling what Labour and swing voters look like. By the next day, candidates and members across the country can log in and print off lists of households that contain people who've been profiled as potential Labour supporters. Meanwhile the Party's direct mail team are putting the finishing touches to tightly targeted mailings aimed at swing voters and other voters who have been profiled as likely swing voters. By the evening the Party is holding a focus group with profiled swing voters, working out the right messages and policies for these key voters and feeding the information back to the direct mail team.

In fact, the main impression I was left with after reading the Wired article was - is this as far as you've got Tories?! The real story here is that with all the money, with all the strategising and flights to America, the Tories are still behind Labour when it comes to digital stuff. That's because, at heart, they believe that money is the key to life. Whereas we know that technology is only a tool to give you more time on the doorstep talking to people and persuading them of your cause. Money can't buy you that, only conviction and hard work can. And Labour's got oodles of that.

Photo: Scorp84, 2006

Jessica Asato is acting director of Progress

04 Mar 2010 14:42

 

Comments

• Posted by Dominic on 04 March 2010, 3:02:03 PM

  What is w. these bespoke systems? Go vanilla and tweak a little bit.

• Posted by Richard Blogger on 04 March 2010, 4:46:29 PM

  Of course the software is important, but the real value in such systems is the **data**. It takes a long while to build up a representative dataset, if the Tories have only just started doing this then it does not matter how good their analysis software is, the results will be inaccurate. If Labour have a two year lead then that bodes well.