OHIO, ENGLAND:

The mean machine (Peter Oborne, The Spectator)

Karl Rove, supreme architect of George W. Bush’s triumph and the universally acknowledged high priest of modern campaign management, has long understood that all voters are not equal in a modern democracy; indeed the vast majority do not matter at all. In 2004 Voter Vault was used by Karl Rove and his acolytes to sift out the tiny minority who determined the result. Some 120 million people went to the polls in the United States two weeks ago, but as far as Rove was concerned only a handful of voters in the swing states of Florida, Ohio and a few others mattered. And long before election day came Voter Vault knew every relevant piece of information about these highly desirable people: their type of car, their social class, the likely size of their house and their likely religious and sexual preferences.

This information enabled analysts to sift out those who were likely to vote Republican, vote Democrat or — the only category to which Rove paid the slightest attention — were torn between the two. Voter Vault made possible interesting observations about the American people; for instance, that Volvo drivers are making a statement about their international outlook and therefore much less likely to vote Republican. In the final weeks of the campaign the Voter Vault machinery enabled campaign managers to guide their voters to the polls with the precision of cruise missiles turning a street corner in central Baghdad. Voter Vault told them whom to ring and, better still, which questions to ask and what information to convey. In this sense the American presidential election of 2004 was the first designer election in history, with policies tailored not for the country at large, but for the individual voter.

Voter Vault has now been acquired at huge cost by the Conservatives, and Tory strategists claim that they have honed this extraordinary piece of kit to a far higher level of ingenuity and precision than anything that has ever been seen in the past. Labour has a version of Voter Vault called Mosaic — but the Conservatives insist their machine is in a different class. ‘We have a much more scientific weapon than anything we have seen before,’ insists co-chairman Maurice Saatchi. ‘We like to think that we are well ahead of the other parties.’ Saatchi says that ‘millions of pounds’ will have been spent on it by the time of the general election.

In America Voter Vault’s powerful and probing intelligence focused on the few million people who determined the result. In Britain it has an even narrower focus. Its all-seeing eye does not engage with retired colonels in Tunbridge Wells. Safe Tory voters in one of the 165 constituencies which remained Tory in the 2001 holocaust are simply taken for granted. Likewise Voter Vault excludes from consideration unemployed shipworkers in Glasgow, since there are few Glasgow marginals which might go Conservative in 2005.

In fact Voter Vault is dedicated to just 900,000 people, or a remarkably small 2 per cent of Britain’s 45 million adult population. Tory strategists have identified these people as the only ones who even faintly matter in the 2005 general election. To qualify for membership of this privileged category voters must possess three attributes. First, they must live in one of the 167 target marginal seats, most of them in the central or West Midlands, which the Conservatives must secure if they are to claim victory. Second, they did not vote Conservative last time. Third, they must be ready to toy with the idea of doing so in 2005. Central Office strategists assert that Voter Vault’s expertise — experts call it ‘geo-demographic segmentation’ — enables them to identify every last one of these people.

The moment one of these precious creatures has been unearthed by Voter Vault, he or she can be targeted with a pitiless accuracy. Election literature, specially focused on voters’ personal concerns, starts to arrive through the letterbox. Electronic mail — a big feature of the recent American elections — is remorselessly dispatched. Canvassers, when they call at the door, will show a special anxiety and concern. In due course this target voter will be called — in some cases repeatedly — from the Conservative phone banks now being set up all around Britain. The largest of these is at the recently opened campaign centre of Coleshill near Birmingham. Coleshill has been deliberately chosen because it is at the heart of next year’s election battleground. Some 20 full-time staff are being hired there, chosen for their easy telephone manner and excellent local knowledge. Armed with Voter Vault’s insights, these staff will show an unnerving insight into the needs and preoccupations of the voters they speak to.

None of this comes about by chance: about 500,000 of Voter Vault’s chosen few are within easy reach of Coleshill. The outcome of the British general election will be determined in the West Midlands, just as Ohio held the key to the United States result two weeks ago. All Conservative policy-making is aimed directly at the handful of swing voters in these crucial target seats. Michael Howard’s speech at Tory conference six weeks ago was a manifestation of this. His five key points — law and order, health, education, tax and immigration — were the five points which, intensive research showed, most closely concerned the Voter Vault 900,000. Last week’s speech by Mr Howard on childcare was made in response to preoccupations highlighted by this allegedly formidable software. One Conservative strategist says that Voter Vault will enable the party ‘to fight a series of local elections, not one big national campaign’.

There is something very disturbing and, beyond doubt, anti-democratic about this relentless focus on such a remarkably small slice of the British electorate. It produces all kinds of malign and distorting effects. The lavish attention on just a few means the effective disfranchisement of the majority, while the obsessive concentration on just 2 per cent of the electorate explains why the policies of the two main parties are coming to resemble each other so closely.

What exactly is disturbing about the two parties being forced to concentrate on and adopt middle England's views about "law and order, health, education, tax and immigration" if they want to prevail in elections?

Posted by Orrin Judd at November 23, 2004 1:57 PM