The number of voters who say, according to Pat Leahy in the Sunday Business Post, that they were canvassed by the Yes campaign. The news here, perhaps generously left downstory by Leahy so as not to embarass contacts, is that the vaunted GOTV efforts of the main parties failed because the local organisations just didn’t get out and hit the doorsteps like the bosses wanted. Fatigue? Or doubt?
Leahy dips into this book to tell us why this matters:
Does this matter? Recent research suggests that it matters very much indeed. In a new book which contains the results of the first indepth academic study of Irish electoral behaviour, evidence of the exact impact of voter contact - or canvassing - is presented.
The authors (Michael Marsh, Richard Sinnott, John Garry and Fiachra Kennedy) say that, in the 2002 general election campaign, over half of all voters reported that their household had been contacted by a candidate to look for their votes. The total proportion of voters who report contact of any kind by either a candidate or party workers is 76 per cent – a massive percentage by any international comparison.
Moreover, the study finds that voters who are canvassed by political parties are more likely to vote for those parties. Some 65 per cent of those who voted for Fianna Fáil were canvassed by the party; the figure for Fine Gael is 64 per cent.
The effectiveness of voter contact is greatly increased when the voter is contacted by only one party. As the authors note: ‘‘The local element of campaigning in Ireland plays a key role - many would say it plays the key role.” In other words, canvassing works.
There are signs in the post-Lisbon research that this same effect was present. Those who were canvassed were not just more likely to vote - they were more likely to vote in accordance with the wishes of the canvasser.
From the looks of this, there will be more data forthcoming on Irish voting behaviour. But is it really surprising that traditional GOTV efforts work? And with the rise of online social networks-based
I’m looking forward to the next few years as a politics watcher. Ireland might be the first country in the world to go straight from oldskool door-knocking to Obama-style social network-supercharged campaigns in one generation.
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1 response so far ↓
1 B // Jun 30, 2008 at 7:18 pm
I have no sympathy for the Yes camps whinging. They preferred to use a mass media fudge rather than getting down among the unwashed.
The biggest donkey of a candidate can be managed into a seat by pounding the streets and estates so why should Lisbon have been any different.
What I think is that the long goodbye to Bertie meant that the troops were not ready for battle when the time came. Fianna Fail outmanoevered themselves. The other shower of FG, Labour etc couldn’t get themselves elected so the poor showing by them is no surprise.
Sinn Fein are the masters of vote management. This is not new. They have been able to do this for years. The rest were asleep.
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