General Election 2019: Parties blitz voters with last minute online promotions
In the last forty eight hours of the election campaign, a ballot box blitzkrieg has begun. All parties are now using their data analysis and processing to bring an arsenal of last minute political adverts and promotions to bear upon those they have identified as potential voters. The siege of social media stunts has intensified, as the parties engage in a last minute scramble to mobilise their support and stymie the march of their opponents.
At CCHQ, it seems that the online blitz is following a similar pattern to the successful 2016 Leave campaign in the final weeks and days of the EU referendum contest. The logic behind it is simple: if voters believe that the Conservatives have this election in the bag, then there is a chance that those who would have otherwise voted Tory will not turn out. This is one of the factors which is believed to have contributed to Theresa May’s failure to win a majority in 2017.
What is needed, then, is the creation of a sense of urgency. The Conservatives have been bombarding potential voters on Youtube with promoted videos ramming home the message that they will “Get Brexit Done” . This message has been cycled through various formats – one clip shows a rancorous “hung parliament” invading the everyday lives of Britons, before promising that the Conservatives will “end the argument” and “stop the chaos”. The Get Brexit done slogan is repeated throughout the video, just on the off chance that you had missed the message.
From the sublime to the ridiculous, there is also an “amusing” recreation by Boris Johnson of a famous scene from Richard Curtis’s 2003 Christmas Rom Com hit, Love Actually. For those who have not seen the film, the creepy scene has Andrew Lincoln confess his love to Keira Knightly by standing on her doorstep and showing her a number of pre-prepared placards. This scene has now been given a makeover by CCHQ. The 2019 General Election remake shows Boris Johnson on a doorstep, replacing the role played by the young Andrew Lincoln, and unveiling a series of placards, outlining the Tories’ key campaigning slogans.
Alastair Benn has more in his article today on how this campaign has turned into the Love Actually election – you can read it here.
Labour have been biting back, and they’ve cranked up their Facebook game, looking to outflank the Tories with social media counter-manoeuvres. They have produced their own video, called “Vote Labour Actually”, which, instead of having the Prime Minister unveil Tory policies on the placards, has been edited to show distressing images from “the Tory NHS”.
Expanding upon this theme, which Labour strategists believe hurts the Tories most, Labour have also been unveiling videos of a JCB branded with “TORY CUTS” hammering through a wall entitled, “NHS” – a play on a Tory video of a JCB smashing through “GRIDLOCK.”
Labour’s final campaign broadcast, trailed this evening, is entitled: “We have 3 days to save our NHS”. Within just over an hour it had received 152,000 views on Facebook alone.You can check out all of this and more on their Facebook page.
None of it is new or particularly subtle – the parties are employing the big data bludgeon at this point, not the rapier. And this is only the start of the forty eight hour blitzkrieg. The games are not yet over – they have, unfortunately for all of us subjected to them, only just begun.
How will this information war impact upon the outcome? Let’s see. One crucial indication of where the parties stand now will come tonight, with the YouGov MRP poll which is due to be published later. The last one, published on 27th November, pointed to a Conservative majority of 68 with the party getting a total of 356 seats. The Tories will want this one to be closer, to motivate complacent voters.
This MRP poll was the poll which accurately predicted the hung parliament in 2017, and so it will be seen as a key indication of what will take place on Thursday. While no poll is without its flaws, the size and methodology of the MRP poll make it by far the most important and most indicative poll of the election campaign. This will provide us with some notion of the potential outcome of this election, beyond the fog of the ongoing social media war.