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Campaign analysis: Saturday April 30
Daniel Forman's daily diary of the election campaign.
Saturday April 30, 11:25am
A lot of trees have been expended in reflective newspaper pieces over the past three weeks discussing why so few trees have been used up on campaign posters, leaflets and election addresses.
Another popular theme has been how good the main parties have got at targeting their efforts, energies and cash towards the key swing voters in the key swing seats.
Despite the fact that Labour is defending a landslide three figure majority, it is an open secret that the Conservatives believe just 840,000 floating voters will decide whether Tony Blair gets a third term at all.
Both points are valid. This campaign does seem curiously characterless and the low visibility of the election will do nothing to help arrest the decline in turnout.
Equally first-past-the-post does little to counter the charge that "my vote counts for nothing round here" in the vast majority of constituencies.
But amid the complaints that campaigns are not what they used to be - in terms of streets full of colour and town centres full of debate - and that the electoral system is unjust, the two theories have rarely been linked.
Put simply, if there are less than a million votes in it, why bother to chase the rest?
It is an over-simplification but essentially true. Every poster costs money and even the two main parties'£15-20m budgets will not spread very far.
Activists' time is similarly precious and human resources are targeted as carefully as cash. Busloads are shipped off at weekends to wherever the polls show fights are tight.
Yet even in ultra-marginals such as Shipley voters complain that no-one has yet knocked on their door to ask for support.
But this could be as much to do with targeting as spending money on one seat
rather than another.
With IT systems such as the Tories' 'voter-vault' allowing the parties to use consumer data to predict which households are likely to be safe, wavering or a waste of time, even within a street, let alone a seat, time and money can be carefully deployed.
The answer - a proportional, or at least more propotional - electoral system
remains firmly off the election agenda. Even its biggest fans, the Liberal Democrats, are making little noise about it.
Which is a shame, both for trees and the public.
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