Choice behaviour

Does the average woman or man in the street really want to see their prospective parliamentary / council candidates in the same street? 

You may have heard that there is a general election coming up in the UK.  Equally you may not have heard, in which case I can only envy you.  Rochester and Strood's by-election in November 2014 brought election fever to us early, and it is still very much here.  Dozens of MPs descended upon us.   Their keen interest in our towns has not noticeably improved the area.  It is a shame that they didn't all stay home and just pledge us all the money it had cost them to campaign instead.  It led me to wonder what really influences our voting behaviour. 

You venture out to visit the library or a trip to a teashop and you run the gauntlet of candidates and their supporters, leaflets and clipboards in hand, rigid smiles plastered on to their faces.  I avert my gaze and walk by as if they were not there. I have had lots of practice in that from studying the way young, attractive men avoid me.  I don't pursue young men, I can see how ineffective that would be, so I wonder why parties put so much time and money into campaigning without any supporting evidence to say it works?  I would like to see one area brave enough to ban campaigning and see what difference, if any, that it made to voting behaviour.  I choose the candidate I think will be best for the area.  If I still can't decide, I then chose the party I dislike the least.  If that disappoints you, I put less effort into my choice of first husband, so at least my choice mechanisms are improving.   

I ran a quick search on the internet, the font of all knowledge available to me on a Sunday morning.   There wasn't much available.  The Guardian wrote a piece on a voting behaviour study by the London School of Economics and Opinium in 2010 (article here).  Apparently there hasn't been much research into this since the 1960s, which would have taken place in a vastly different landscape in terms of politics, social media and technology.  The study has yet to finish, bit some of the findings so far have been published (article here).  

Findings suggest that 20% to 30% of voters change their minds in the last week, 25% of Americans have actually cried because of an election, and 63% of voters say they feel happy when they are in a voting booth.  This tells us three things, candidates should stay at home until near the end of the election, there is a lot to be said for the stereotypical British reserve and 63% of voters need to get out a lot more.  Voters who vote in a polling station are more likely to cast their vote based on what they think is best for the country.  If you take that fact into account along with vote-rigging scandals which have bugged postal voting (2005 BBC report), it is a good argument for encouraging us to vote in person.  

I have yet to see anything about the influence, negative or positive, of door to door campaigning.  Young voters apparently are more negative about politicians who use social media campaigns, which seems a bit hypocritical for a generation whose attachment to their smart phones is akin to general population's attachment to oxygen.  I don't mind the social media campaign, I find it much easier to cope with that than candidates campaigning in person.  In fact I am somewhat disappointed that only one out of my five local candidates is on Twitter.  I enjoy a good rant.  

Candidates will campaign, whether I like it or not.  Voters will employ a myriad of reasons for casting their vote, whether campaigners like it or not.  I don't think of marketing campaigns as manipulating the way I vote, I think of them as marketing companies manipulating political parties into wasting their time and money.  They and the spin doctors are like a controlling partner, whispering in the ears of the insecure politicians 'you know you'd be nothing without me'.  The reality is a bit less spin would do everyone a favour.  I look forward to the full study being published.  I find it all quite fascinating, even if that does suggest that I also need to get out more.