A lesson for the Labour party from recent American political history is what changed between the elections of 2008 and 2012; it is to be found in a process that began before most voters outside of Democratic circles had heard of Barack Obama. The electorate itself changed and, as it did, a new front opened in the political battle – elections are no longer solely about who will vote and how, but increasingly about who can vote.
The principle behind political-party-based voter registration is simple: if you are not sure that you can persuade and turn out enough existing voters to win an election, go out and create more. Progressive organisations in particular stand to benefit from voter registration because unregistered voters are disproportionately ethnic minority, highly mobile (such as students), or lower income – essentially, voters who are more likely than not to support progressive candidates.
Voter registration has a utility beyond increasing the number of potential ballots for a party; it is a fair test of the party’s ability to conduct operations in an election, an opportunity to train volunteers and staff, and a chance to identify super-volunteers who can play an important role in the election campaign.
If a party cannot efficiently conduct a coordinated voter registration drive, it does not bode well for its chances in the election; assuming this is discovered in a timely fashion, it has time to correct mistakes before the election cycle starts in earnest.
Prior to Obama for America 2008, the model for a campaign building a winning majority involved two primary activities: persuasion and turnout. Voters who were undecided would need to be convinced; voters who supported the candidate would need to be driven to the polls (sometimes literally).
To these two activities, OFA added a third strategic approach – voter registration. Newly registered voters + persuaded voters + a turned-out base = victory, was the calculus. By creating a statistically significant populace of new voters, OFA was not only supporting this calculus, but generating a new universe of potential volunteers and donors which, in turn, fed the needs of the larger campaign machine.
In April 2013, various elements of the Labour party disagreed in the public prints about whether Labour is capable of winning the next general election with 35 per cent of the vote or whether it needed 37.5 per cent. Voter registration was largely and conspicuously absent from this discussion. Labour must move on from thinking of elections in terms of ‘persuasion + turnout’ and add ‘voter registration’ as a third angle of approach to victory.
The fact that Britain has a higher registration rate among eligible voters than the United States means that more effort and resource will be required to identify and register new voters. The same essential principles apply, however, as individuals who are not registered to vote are generally more likely to belong to groups likely to support Labour. If the difference between 35 per cent and 37.5 per cent of the vote is sufficient to cause a public squabble within Labour, the party’s leadership must ask itself if it can afford to overlook any pool of potential voters.
This effect is compounded by the shift to individual voter registration, which will occur in 2014. Good work on the part of the Electoral Reform Society and others has blunted the worst aspects of the policy, which in one incarnation threatened to disenfranchise millions of voters; for the purposes of the 2015 general election. IVR now threatens the ballot of postal voters who have not individually registered.
This is an excellent test. Labour knows who is registered for a postal ballot; it should conduct a campaign to make sure postal voters are individually registered so that their postal vote in 2015 will count. Beyond being a worthy end unto itself, this small campaign would act as a trial-run for the broader voter registration effort that the party cannot afford to neglect.
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Frank Spring is a contributor to Forward: The change Labour still needs
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I fundamentally think that voter registration is a red herring here. Yes it should be done as part of standard doorstep activities within normal Voter Id when Labour supporting electors are found but overall it is a poor use of resource – espcially if the elector is not also signed up to a postal vote.
Lets assume that you knock on 100 doors of unregistered households, 18 months out from an election. In some parts of London half those households will move before the election – especially in lower registration areas. On the remainder at least half will be out. On the remainder we can expect c. 1/3 to potentially support Labour – so around 8%. Of those maybe half will sign a registration form, so maybe 4% of the original and of those maybe 25% will then vote (50% if signed up to postal voting)- so a 1% to 2% uplift.
Now lets imagine we target 100 doors of people whop always vote Labour, are registered but don’t always vote. Firstly by being registered they are more likely to be part of the stable population and still registered at election time. Second, if we can sign an irregular voter up to a postal vote their propensity massively jumps. So if we knock on 100 doors, maybe 70 will still be in place for the election, we might get 25 postal voters, for those turnout might jump from 40% to 80% so from around 10 voters cast to around 20. I personally think that is a better use of resource.
Another way to use the resource is to knock on the doors of people that always vote but switch. This is obviously part of an engagement strategy and harder to quantiy but as part of a regular activity – and espcially if this happens more than once before the election – I’d argue it is probably a better use of resource than registration drives. And for every vote we gain the opposition frequently lose one (depending on where the switch comes from).
Overall I’m not saying registering voters is a bad idea, but I do think that registration drives are a better use of council resource than they are of Labour Party resource – we can simply get a better reward elsewhere.
IVR when it arrives may well change this dynamic in the short term, but as this is not planned to be enforced for 2015 we should focus on the prize at hand.