Is this it?

Well it is just over 12 hours until the polls open and campaigning is drawing to a close. I have had another Labour party leaflet through today, the only one from any party this week.

Searching for a word to sum up the 2010 election campaign in York Central I have landed upon lackluster, or perhaps unenthusiastic.

Over the last four or so weeks I have received a few leaflets from the main parties (chart below) but no canvassers, no one knocking on my door, no-one phoning, emailing or stopping me in town. On my street there are perhaps 2 leaflets stuck up in windows.
Obviously a lot of attention locally has been diverted into the much more marginal York Outer constituency. Even accepting that it does not feel as though the main candidates, especially those trying to unseat Hugh Bayley, have really put in much of an effort to win my vote.

Leaflet tactics - are Labour smarter than the rest?

A slightly arcane but, I think, interesting topic this one. Section 91 of the 1983 Representation of the People's Act basically entitles election candidates to each have one piece of election literature delivered by the Royal Mail for free.

In York Central the Conservatives and the Lib Dems both appear to have done the same thing, that is to use their free mailshot to have one leaflet delivered to everyone on the electoral register. So far so straight forward.

The problem arises when you have houses where more than one person is on the electoral register, for instance there are three people registered at my address. The result is that three identical leaflets from the Conservatives turned up at my house on the same day, and then a week later three identical leaflets from the Lib Dems turned up. One of these leaflets get read and the other two get discarded.

What Labour appear to be doing is breaking their mailshot down into stages. So last week we received one leaflet addressed to one of the people at my address. This week we received a different leaflet addressed to another one of the people at my address, and one presumes we will receive a third leaflet to the third person next week.

The impact is that Labour effectively get double or triple value from their free Royal Mail delivery. At the same time they lessen their reliance on local volunteers pounding the streets doing deliveries and potentially make their campaign seem more active than it really is.

Leaflets flooding in

Above is an updated version of my candidates contacts chart showing the recent influx of leaflets from the various candidates in York Central.

On Monday I received a leaflet from the BNP and one from UKIP. Both were waiting for me together when I got home from work and both are the same size and of equally lurid design. This did seem a little suspicious but the BNP leaflet explicitly criticises UKIP so we will put their simultaneous arrival down to a coincidence.

Of the other parties the latest Labour leaflet concentrates on what Labour and Hugh Bayley have done for families while the Lib Dem leaflet contains the word "change" 11 times. The Greens focus on their local work as councillors and campaigners but also include more of their national policies than they have on previous leaflets. Interestingly they are continuing to push the message that the Tory's are not targeting York. Something which can be seen from my own candidates contacts chart above. (Although to be fair Susan Wade-Weeks may have been preoccupied this week what with the assassination attempt on her at the weekend).

Last, but certainly not least, the Monster Raving Loony leaflet puts forward a range of local and national policies. My favourite of which is the elimination of red tape - by making it blue.

Vote for Change!

Susan Wade- Weeks has sent me a leaflet, in fact she sent me three (all the same leaflet addressed to different people who live or have lived in my house). More on that in a minute.

But first Vote for Change! This is the message from the Conservatives (Vote for change in York Central), Lib Dems (If you want Change you have to vote for it) and the Greens (Vote Green for a real change). Can anyone spot a pattern?

Anyway, back to Susan Wade-Weeks. The bulk of the leaflet is concerned with promoting the work Susan Wade-Weeks has been doing in York over the last three years. This includes campaigning on behalf of local taxi drivers, working with insurers on flood damage and campaigning against barriers at the train station. A lot of the campaigning that Susan Wade-Weeks highlights seems to be her "standing together" with people on existing campaigns. There isn't much evidence of her actually achieving anything on her own.

The new Liberal Democrat leaflet (hand delivered by Christian Vassie) is more focused on national politics. It promotes the Lib Dems as the alternative to the Conservative and Labour parties, and plays on the fallout from the first election debate (although it doesn't actually mention it). The main body of the leaflet gives the Lib Dem solution to a range of problems in the format How to create a fairer nation, How to tackle immigration, How to save British jobs, etc. etc.

The new Green Party leaflet is split pretty equally between Andy Chase's campaigning work in York and national Green party policies. Andy Chase repeats his claims from earlier leaflets that based on the performance of the the Green party in recent local elections, and the fact that York Central is not a priority target seat for the Conservatives or the Lib Dems, the Greens represent the major challenge to the Labour incumbents.

Hugh and Su

It has been nearly a week since my last post and to be honest not a lot of very much interest seems to have happened. I have had another leaflet through from Hugh Bayley. The content is basically the same as his last leaflet giving lots of facts and figures about the things he has achieved as York's MP.

Hugh Bayley's claimed achievements include saving you £47 on your water bill, better pensions, better schools, more jobs, more doctors, more police and less crime. In this leaflet he does very briefly refer to his expenses saying that he was the first MP in the region to publish his expenses in full and was not found to have over claimed at all by the independent auditors.

This second leaflet means that Hugh Bayley is now in first place on the candidates contacts chart with Christian Vassie and Andy Chase in equal second place.

I am starting to get a little bit worried about the Conservative Candidate though. We are 9 days into the election campaign and Susan Wade-Weeks, the presumed main challenger to Hugh Bayley, has yet to make contact. I checked her website and that doesn't seem to have been updated for over 2 weeks. I do hope she is OK. If anyone has heard from Susan please can they let me know.

While we wait for her to make contact I suppose we will have to make do with this video of her talking about the campaign

Hugh Bayley Leaflet

I got my first leaflet through from the Labour party yesterday. (Not actually addressed to me but to a previous occupant of my house).

It looks like the local Labour party have beaten me to it and got a copy up on The Straight Choice already.

The leaflet is basically pretty positive. Hugh Bayley does not attack anyone. Instead his leaflet concentrates on what he claims to have done for York since the last election. His claims include an extra 5,800 jobs, halved NHS waiting times, £91 million investment in schools plus £60 million on city college, reducing crime and increasing payments to pensioners.

Obviously a lot of these are, at least partially, down to national Labour party policies rather than just Hugh Bayley's personal influence but it is a positive start from the Labour candidate. It will be interesting to see if the other candidates try and critique Hugh Bayley's claimed achievements or continue, as some of them have been doing so far, banging on the sleaze drum.

Candidate Contacts Chart

I have created the chart above (and in the right hand navigation) to show the number of contacts that I personally receive from each of the York Central Candidates.

As contacts I am counting leaflets, letters, emails, phone calls, knocking on my door or accosting me in the street. I will not be counting any attempts at contact though this blog though. What I am interested in is the amount of contact that an ordinary voter in York Central gets from each candidate.

I am using the beginning of this week as the starting point. So far I have had 1 leaflet each from the Liberal Democrats, Greens and Labour. I will update the chart periodically through the next few weeks up to election day.

Campaigning gets underway

Like a lot of people in York Central I have been getting sporadic election leaflets from some of the parties for the last couple of months. Most have come from the Lib Dems and Greens. I personally have not seen any leaflets from the other parties. It would be interesting to hear if this is reflected across the constituency.
The latest leaflet from Christian Vassie (above) centres on the fact that Hugh Bayley, who has been elected to represent the interests of the people of York in London, spends most of his time in London. Christian Vassie uses this revelation to accuse Hugh Bayley of lying to the people of York.

Other than revealing that he hadn't quite grasped that being an MP involves spending quite a lot of time in London, Chritian Vassie's latest leaflet has his "Four Steps to a Fairer Britain". These are

1) Tax Cuts
2) More money for education
3) More money for renewable energy
4) Giving you the right to sack corrupt MPs - (is that not what elections are for?)

Christian Vassie does not reveal where the money for steps 1, 2 and 3 of his 4 step plan will come from but I am sure he will let us know in his next leaflet.

Andy Chase (above) meanwhile is using the 2007 local election results to claim that the Green Party are the real challengers to Labour in York Central. He is basing this on two things. First the new York Outer constituency is effectively a three way marginal which means it is where the Lib Dems and Conservatives are concentrating most of their efforts leaving the Greens more room to maneuver in York Central. Secondly Andy Chase claims that if the results of the 2007 local elections were replicated then the Greens would be in second place on about 20% of the vote (with Labour ahead at 33% and both the Lib Dems and Conservatives on about 17%).

I am not entirely convinced by his logic on this one as the Greens only managed 4.5% of the vote in the 2005 general election. Even to replicate their claimed 20% effective vote from 2007 would be a massive step up for them in this election. Let alone getting the extra 10 or 20% on top of that that they would probably need to take the seat.

Andy Chase has a copy of this leaflet on his blog and you can see a copy of Christian Vassie's leaflet on The Straight Choice.

Lib Dems Start Campaigning

Christian Vassie and the Lib Dems have started sending out election literature. Under the tag line Community, Sustainability, Liberty, Equality they reference a bunch of issues including MP's expenses, the transition to a post carbon economy and Christian Vassie's record as a councillor.

One of the repeated themes of the leaflet is that Christian Vassie is an outsider not tainted by the same brush as career politicians (he has been on York Council for 6 years). The leaflet includes a cartoon suggesting that most MP's are just empty suits and poses the question "Do you want an MP who will do more than sit there drawing a salary?"

The "outsider who can make a difference" is of course a tried and tested political campaign strategy and it doesn't seem that Christian Vassie will be alone in claiming this status in the 2010 general election. Indeed the York BNP end their most recent blog with the statement
"We are the real alternative to the LIB-LAB-CON crooks". It will be interesting to see if UKIP and the Conservatives try and use the same tactics once the campaign proper gets under way.