The hidden election

The Times -- Election 2005 by Tom Baldwin: Parties spend millions on new techniques to target just 800,000 key voters

"Both parties believe that it will be won or lost by a ground-level battle fought away from the television cameras, in which they have been making efforts to identify and contact a relatively small proportion of the electorate.

Michael Howard has told friends in recent weeks that the “people who matter” may number just 838,000 — less than 2 per cent of voters. If they can be persuaded to switch from Labour in 165 marginals, he says, the Tories would win an overall majority.

Labour is spending roughly two thirds of its £15 million campaign budget on this “ground war”, rather than on billboard and newspaper advertisements. Its national communications centre in Gosforth, Newcastle upon Tyne, has made 2.2 million canvassing calls in the past year. It has also posted seven million items of mail to households since the autumn, at a rate of 1.5 million a month.

Mr Howard’s decision to concentrate on a few thousand voters in each target seat reflects the success of US Republicans last year in using similar software to win over key voters in swing states such as Florida and Ohio.

Another reason for Labour’s reliance on new technology is that its membership has fallen by almost half since 1997. Although it has hired around 100 full-time local organisers in marginal constituencies, it does not always have enough activists for traditional door-to-door canvassing to be effective. The Tories have similar problems with a membership whose average age is in the mid-60s.

Even the Liberal Democrats — who pioneered “pavement politics” — acknowledge that there may be a shortage of activists in some of the 100 seats that they are defending or hoping to gain. "