Basildon local elections: When good feeling and good data collide

In the 10 years that I’ve been involved in organising elections for the Labour Party I can count on one hand the number of campaigns where the feeling and data were in perfect harmony.

Far too often I’ve felt a canvassing session is going well just to check the data afterwards and realise those few people who were polite to me on the doors weren’t actually providing us with solid data. And equally I’ve felt demoralised at the end of a round just to find the data moving in our direction.

But the past 10 weeks in Basildon have been different. The feeling on the doorsteps and on social media has been incredibly positive, and the data has matched this. And the results speak for themselves, with the Labour Group doubling in size from 9 to 18, more Tories losing their seats than anywhere else in Essex, and Labour becoming the largest party on Basildon Council for the first time in 22 years. So how did we do it?

Hitting all our targets

The reality across much of South Essex is that Labour rarely has the numbers to form a majority administration and we rely on Independent Groups or smaller parties such as the Lib Dems to form a coalition.  This is the case across both Councils with target Parliamentary seats like Southend and non-target seats like Basildon.

In Basildon, the majority of the Labour Party’s infrastructure and data is focused South of the A127, which I’m proud to say is now officially a Tory-free zone due to their 10 seats in the area all going to Labour or Independent Councillors.  With 6 of 24 seats South of the A127 firmly under the control of the Independent Group, Labour target the other 18 seats across Laindon, Basildon Town and Pitsea.

Across the 6 wards that make up our 18 target seats (or should I now say our 18 held seats), the three Basildon Town wards are considered traditional Labour wards that more often than not return a Labour Councillor with an impressive majority.  Given the national polls and the anger locally with the Conservative-run Council, particularly around disastrous changes made to the waste system, we as a Labour Group felt comfortable spending the majority of our time away from these wards and in the three Laindon and Pitsea wards, where before the election we had only 2 out of 9 Councillors.

We delivered significantly more election materials to these three wards than the Basildon Town ones, with some residents receiving as many as 11 leaflets and 2 direct mail letters across the 10 week campaign, more than we’d ever produced before and something we were able to do this year due to spending limits being higher for the short campaign because of the all-out nature of the election.

Simple literature with a clear and positive message

Timing was everything when delivering leaflets.  Starting the campaign in full swing at the end of February meant we only had 4 weeks to deliver our first round of leaflets before the spending cap came into effect.

All our literature was designed and produced independently, and with the exception of the Election Address, each leaflet was focused on a specific issue in the campaign.

Our attack leaflets in particular had a heavy focus on personality, with images of Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss adorning the front side.  In the Brexit-supporting, Boris Johnson-loving part of the world South Essex is, the most important thing we could do is show to voters that the Conservative Party they voted for in their droves to ‘Get Brexit Done’ in 2019 is not the same party they see running their personal finances into the ground now.

A focus on known voters

Local Elections are not the same as General Elections, wherever you are in the country you won’t see a 60-70% turnout for your local council elections.  Basildon has a consistent turnout of around 20% in local council elections, and from purchasing and studying the marked register every year we know it is the same 20% of voters who vote year in, year out. There is therefore no point spending hours upon hours knocking on doors of people you know will not vote for anybody on the day.

Postal votes make up around 45% of total ballots cast during a typical local election campaign in Basildon, so targeting them is the difference between winning and losing.  Matching up postal voters on the marked register with our canvassing data of known voting intention allowed us to tailor direct mails to drop at the same time as postal vote ballots, with known Conservative voters receiving a letter outlining the poor Conservative record in Basildon, while Labour voters would receive information about Labour’s plan for the Borough.

Important data for the general election and beyond

The most important data in any election isn’t what you collect on the doorsteps, it’s what comes out of the ballot boxes at the count.  The verification sampling data we collect is often a mad rush at the count, especially this year where many ballot papers had 3 X’s on them, but the data collected gives us a key indication of how accurate our doorstep data is and which polling districts need the most work between now and the next set of local elections.

We also sampled ballot boxes North of the A127 in some of our non-target wards to get a feel for any potential surprises or polling districts more favourable to Labour, with an eye on the General Election to target areas we wouldn’t usually think to go.  While the Conservative vote held strong across much of Billericay, Labour almost tripled our votes in Burstead ward, home of both the Tory Leader and Deputy Leader, while in Wickford the Independents won all 5 of the seats they contested, and the Conservative vote was much more vulnerable there than in previous years.

With the next set of Borough elections in Basildon 2 years away, there is plenty of time to analyse the huge amount of data collected on the doorsteps and at the count and begin targeting new areas of the Borough where the Conservative vote is fading and voters are crying out for a competent Labour Party to step in.

To read more about the local elections and what the results mean for Labour going forward, see Whatever happens in the locals, the task remains huge.

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