The first session was titled Public Affairs, Public Relations & Political Marketing. Neil Bendle  (University of Western Ontario) presented the first paper that investigated the impact of behavioral economics, and the role of irrationality, on market orientated parties. The application of rational choice in theory building requires assumptions of perfect knowledge on the part of voters , and that voters will always follow a selfish economic rationale in their decision making. Authors often conflate rationality with a lack of errors, which is an impossible standard. Bendle argued that this did not mean that the market orientated model need be abandoned, but rather its needs recasting order to assimilate voters’ social preferences, selflessness and logical inconsistencies.

Mark Passera’s paper in this session also developed a discussion of the role of applying behavioral economics to political marketing. His paper focused on the influence of Thaler and Sunstein’s book Nudge which advocates that governmental communications, in public  policy areas such as health and pensions, “nudge” citizens towards making better choices.  Again the application of rational choice assumptions were problematised when recognising highly individualised personal motivations, as well as personal emotion response to policy initiatives.  The session was completed by Iordanis Kotzaivazoglou (University of Macedonia )and Emmanuella Plakoyiannaki’s (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki) longitudinal analysis of gender stereotypes in print advertising during election campaigns in Greece. The paper presented findings from a content analysis of newspaper advertisements placed by parliamentary candidates in five successive election campaigns.  The results suggest that within advertising, where the candidate can control their branding, there has been a gradual convergence in gender traits stereotypes and that female candidates are primarily portrayed using male-orientated cues.

The second panel was themed around the impact of electoral systems on political marketing.  Kacung Marijan (Airlangga University) presented a study on how the adoption of open list voting has impacted on the marketisation of politics in Indonesia.  The change to the voting system has encouraged competition between candidates within parties. Consequently the market for political campaign consultants has expanded as many candidates are beginning to seek their services. Alongside the rise of posters to support individual candidates within the party lists, the costs of campaigning have significantly increased.  Wahidah Siregar’s (Sunan Ampel State Institute of Islamic Studies) paper also focused on Indonesia and looked at the relationship between the electoral system and the representation of women in parliament.  She explained how the rising costs of electoral campaigning accounted for the high proportion of female candidates coming from a business background. However, the majority of female candidates have yet to secure winnable positions of their party lists.  Nigar Degirmenci (Pamukkale University) used the 2010 referendum on constitutional reform in Turkey to explore developments in the personalisation of politics.  Degirmenci used critical discourse analysis to analyse the speeches of the main party leaders in Turkey during the campaign. Erdoğan‘s discourses included the deployment of a form of address in Turkish that older siblings use when addressing younger family members.  The paper also found that a proportion of people voted less on the constitutional issues at hand, but rather as acts of support, or opposition, to Erdoğan

The third session was titled political marketing and communication. Waraporn Chatratichart (University of the Thai Chamber of Commerce) presented a paper with results from surveys and focus groups into attitudes towards political leaders amongst young people in Thailand. The paper explained how, after the downfall of Thaksin Shinawatra 2006, the personal integrity of a leader became more important from the perspective of young people. However, competency remained significant, so that young people in the study sought a ‘hybrid’ leader who is both honest and competent, what Chatratichart labelled an ‘ethical Thaksin’.

Oliver Escobar (University of Edinburgh) presented his paper on the emotional basis of the international appeal of Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign. Combining auto-ethnography with focus groups and interviews with European voters who were engaged and highly supportive of Obama’s campaign, the study found emotional engagement through a combination of anxiety and enthusiasm.  In setting out to interpret Obama’s success it was argued that personal story of Obama intertwined with grander American Dream narratives was significant. Escobar concluded that the campaign succeeded by embedding a multilayered architecture of meanings, in conjunction with the synergetic use of grassroots mobilization and media technologies.

Darren Lilleker (Bournemouth University) presented his paper co-authored with Karolina Koc-Michalska (Science-Po, Paris) on the strategic use by members of the European Parliament (MEPs) of the internet. The paper shared results of a content analysis of the websites of 440 MEPs, with coding categories collecting data on variables relating to personalisation, branding and community building. The majority of sites’ content sought to inform rather than interact. The study also found that the more social communicators were younger, female, MEPs from minor parties, who tended to be elected by more personal voting systems, as opposed to party lists.

Eva Johanna Schweitzer (University of Mainz) also presented findings of a study on political web sites, this time with a focus on Germany. Utilising Resnick’s theories on the “normalisation” of cyberspace – where the internet will replicate the typical deficits and shortcomings found in offline electioneering – the paper used content analysis to evaluate the main party web sites in national elections from 2002 to 2009.  The study found that web sites continue to become more professional, with a significant emphasis on top down information and presentation. The results suggested that technological innovations in web 2.0 had exaggerated existing power relations in electoral competition between major and minor actors. Website content continues to contain significant levels of negative content, and despite some elements of personalisation, it was a case of “politics as usual” – and normalisation remains a valid concept.

For the final session of the conference Ieva Dmitričenko (University of Latvia) presented a paper that investigated the balance between western and Russian influences on the development of political campaign practice in Latvia. The study was based on 12 in-depth interviews with campaign practitioners with experience of important roles in at least one election. A key context for Latvia is its status as a post-soviet country, that still has close economic and cultural ties to Russia, and the criticism of what some theorists argue is a model of “guided” or “decorative” democracy that has developed since the end of the Soviet Union.  Dmitričenko noted that the USA is considered major exporter of political marketing approaches, but from her research on Latvia it is more accurate to speak about the “globalization” of political campaigning rather that “Americanisation”, because in Latvia the most dominant influence is from the Western Europe and Russia. An interesting aspect of the interviews was the apparent importance of self-study in practitioner education, and the surprising citation by some of the respondents that they used feature films such as Spinning Boris or Wag the Dog as occasional sources of knowledge

Finally, for my own paper, (Scott Davidson, De Montfort University), I explored how a combination of assumptions that utilise rational choice voting theory – and assume a strong market orientation amongst major political parties – has lead many commentators to proclaim the age of grey or senior power.  The paper analysed attempts to segment and target older voters in Britain, and concluded that the quality of the segmentation process will be a key determinant in deciding which campaigns successfully build bonds of trust with the ageing electorate. The paper argued that for strategists segmentation by chronological age is crude and unlikely to gain a competitive edge for their candidates. A more intelligent development of age-related voter segments based on variables such as life stage, values, generational identities and media consumption habits is required to achieve significant strategic advantage.

A very useful resource. I am still surprised to hear that companies perceive there’s a lack of spending power amongst older consumers. Saddened, but not surprised to hear that David observes that companies stereotype older people as powerless, ugly, dowdy or uninspiring – alongside the ongoing obsession with youth.

Although the ageing of the UK population is well documented, less well understood are the implications for a first past the post electoral system such as ours, with the importance of marginal seats in campaigning. My research suggests that Labour and the Liberal Democrats are defending 57 “grey marginals” against the apparent rise in vote share for the Conservatives since 2005.

A note on methods (more details in the full report). I have taken the age differences in turnout from 2005, and assumed these will remain. Of course, future numbers will vary, but at the moment there is no indication of a sudden uplift in the turnout rates of younger voters. The charts below show the estimated age breakdown of turnout for constituencies.

The definition of the grey vote is all voters 55+. This can be justified on several grounds; people in their 50s start to experience age discrimination in employment; they are approaching retirement and may be worried about pensions; and their own parents are likely to be in their 70s or 80s and may be requiring long-term care.

The Grey Marginals

Labour are defending 38 seats with notional majorities of 5,000 or less, but where it’s estimated that over half of turnout will be made up by the grey vote.  What immediately stands out is that it is the Conservatives who are challenging in second place. (The only exceptions are the three seats in Wales.) Most of these seats were Labour gains in the landslide of 1997. A significant proportion are in the midlands and north west, and dominated by small towns or seats that are a mixture of suburban and rural wards. Perhaps the most interesting aspect is that they exist at all – a Lab-Con grey battleground is a new electoral phenomenon – if the Conservatives do win, then Labour’s recovery strategy, I suggest, will have to prioritise how it wins back older voters in seats such as these.

For the Liberal Democrats there has been a longer of history of battling with the Conservatives in grey seats. Indeed, with 19 grey marginals, this amounts to almost one third of their current parliamentary representation.  Their battles with Tory challengers in these seats will have been a core concern for Lib Dem strategists.  Their grey marginals are heavily concentrated in the south and south west, and they will have a special challenge in defending the two wholly new seats of York Outer and Chippenham.

GREY POWER?

It is now a feature of modern campaigns for commentators to proclaim older voters as one of the pivotal battlegrounds in determining the final outcome.

Certainly, it has been the recent drops in turnout amongst younger voters which has accelerated the impact of population ageing.  Younger age groups in the 1970s showed lower turnout rates, but in subsequent elections and as they grew older their turnout increased. But, this trend seems to have been broken in the 1990s, and first time voters in 2001 maintained their low participation rates in 2005.

Older people are more likely to vote, join campaigns and contact elected representatives. They have higher levels of political literacy and are more likely to follow the campaign closely in the media. It would be a foolish strategist who ignored these voters. However, the grey power model is flawed. Older people are not homogenous in political attitudes nor do they vote as a single block who perceive a single shared interest. They are concerned about the prospects for their own children and grand-children and will be divided by hugely varying personal social and economic circumstances.

That said it is likely that parties can succeed if they adopt a sophisticated segmentation of voters by life stage. Furthermore, it is clear that there are issues that particularly impact on the quality of life for older voters, and if grey voters were to perceive one party to be discernibly stronger, or weaker, on those issues, this could become significant. Any party that scores badly with older voters is going to have to do remarkably well elsewhere to have even a remote aspiration of winning a majority in the Commons.

** The data was developed with support from Age Concern, who have used some of the findings for the launch of AGE UK, the new organisation that has arisen from their merger with Help the Aged.

There’s been some strong interest in the media. The BBC were running the research across their online and broadcast channels this morning, and I’ve seen the story appear on the Guardian and Telegraph web sites, amongst others.

Age UK have also released today results (pdf) of polling conducted by Brand Democracy of 3,376 respondents, plus a booster sample of 1,865 voters aged 55 and over.

The poll has a lot of interesting findings, these include the importance of pensions and social care in deciding how to vote, and that one in five older voters are still undecided. This would indicate a huge number of older voters are potentially up for grabs during this campaign. In the seats where there is a majority of older voters this could mean around 10% of the vote consists of undecided older voters – potentially decisive in any close run contest.

How well will the main parties respond to this challenge, we’ll just have to wait and see. Most commentators expect Gordon Brown to fire the starting pistol for the campaign tomorrow.

Britain will soon possess an age profile never seen before in its history, and as society ages so does the electoral register. The report shows how most seats in the House of Commons will elect MPs based on a turnout where grey voters are the majority. It uses the new parliamentary boundaries that will be introduced for a large swathe of seats for the first time at the next general election in 2010.

There’s a wealth of detail in the report and I will blog and comment on some of this over the next few days. Some headline findings include:

• In the coming general election it is estimated that 102 seats in mainland Britain will have 40% or more of turnout comprised of voters aged 65+.

• In this election the number of grey majority seats – that is seats with the majority of turnout coming from voters aged 55 and over -  is estimated to increase to 319, meaning that in 2010 most seats in Britain will hold a grey majority.

• In this general election the data suggests there are 46 grey majority seats where the notional majority within the new boundaries is very marginal i.e. a winning majority of five per cent or less.  Of these 46 seats 14 are held by Labour, 9 by the Liberal Democrats, 1 by the SNP and 22 by the Conservative Party.

• If we slightly widen our defintion of a marginal seat to include seats where the current majority is 5,000 votes or less, then my research suggests that Labour and the Liberal Democrats are defending 57 “grey marginals” against the apparent rise in vote share for the Conservatives since 2005.

Projecting a future election held in 2025

If we project the data forward to 2025 we can see the bigger picture of the rate of change in the age transformation of the British electorate.

The last general election in 2005 saw voters aged 65 and over go past for the first time the one in four voters mark. As we would expect this figure increases incrementally, so that by an election in 2025 over 30% of turnout will be from the over 65s. However, as the rate of ageing in Wales and Scotland is set to run faster than in England, by 2025 over a third of votes cast in Wales and Scotland will come from the over 65s. In these countries over a period 20 years the “pensioner” vote will increase from a quarter to a third.

Chart: The change from 2005 to 2025 in the proportion of turnout comprised of voters aged 65 and over

In terms of voters aged 55 and over we also see steady and significant changes in the size of the wider grey vote. At the last election in 2005 the grey vote (all voters aged 55+) was estimated as being 42.6% of turnout. On this report’s assumptions that the age difference in turnout remains unaltered this will rise to 48.9% by 2025, but the grey vote will represent more than half of the votes cast in Wales and Scotland by 2025. The concept of a grey majority that applies to so many constituencies will by 2025 apply to at least 2 of the nations that comprise the United Kingdom.

Chart: The change from 2005 to 2025 in the proportion of turnout comprised of voters aged 55 and over

Certainly retirement is a highly significant landmark for most voters, but analysis in some of my work includes a category of all voters aged over 55 and refers to this category as the “Grey Vote”.

I feel this is justified because, although much research on age and voter behaviour often focuses on the post-state-retirement electorate, entirely justified and understandable considering the profound social and economic implications of retirement.

However, ageing, and ageing issues do not begin to effect voters the day after retirement. They are, arguably, of life-long concern, however, in the final decade approaching state retirement age these issues become increasingly pertinent to the concerns and standard of living for voters.

For voters aged over 55, ageing issues such as retirement income, age discrimination, the quality of health services, long-term care (particularly for their older parents and relatives) become increasingly important. Even if a 55 year old would not consider themselves “old”, in many ways other people and agencies have already started to treat and portray them differently.

In a two way with the studio about the imminent publication of ‘relevations’ about Gordon Brown’s apparently stormy relations with some of his staff. (These are being published in the first edition of the re-designed Observer tomorrow). Spencer said:

“Inevitably we have this situation at this election  where apart from the economy, which is huge, we’re are a little bit devoid of seriously big issues, the consequence of that inevitably is that there is increased focus on the personalities of the combatants”

Broadcast at 19.04 today on Sky News. Transcribed by me through the wonders of SKY Plus.

Well at least Spencer thinks global economic collapse just about warrants some attention squeezed in between 24 hour rolling news on Tiger Woods, Katie Price and John Terry, but apparently nothing else about our politics and society is deemed to be news worthy – so it looks like SKY would rather serve up two months of  ‘focus’ on personality issues in their campaign coverage.

Actually I think SKY will find that  voters would like to hear more on a wide range of very important issues.  Perhaps if their senior journalists find the prospect of reporting on a pivotal election campaign such a chore, they should step aside and find someone who is more motivated and engaged to cover the campaign?  Of course, SKY will cover a number of issues, but there is a threatening tone to this report, a pre-justification for trivial dumbed down coverage? I hope not, but we shall see.

Perhaps public opinion wasn’t with you, perhaps the public was with you but no major political party wanted to be associated with your issue, or maybe to win you had to get the government to spend a large amount of money – never an easy ask.

So you go to work some mornings under a grey cloud and asking ‘are we just wasting our time here’. But through your persistence, or through a dramatic, perhaps unforeseen, change in the issue environment, suddenly your objectives look realisable again. Perhaps through a combination of keeping the candle alive on your issue, and external events that prove to be a catalyst for shifts in public opinion, it’s game on.

I thought of this in regard to the campaign for the Tobin Tax, or as it has been re-branded this week in the UK – the Robin Hood Tax.  The campaign to raise a tax on international currency speculation to discourage damaging short-termism and raise considerable funds for social investment, great idea in principle, but seemingly a political impossibility.

But with the credit crunch and the banks nearly bringing the global economy to its knees the whole issue environment has, almost, been turned on its head. World leaders such as Gordon Brown and Angela Merkel now publicly support such an initiative and media and public opinion are now certainly much more open to this proposal.  Suddenly a small tax on transactions that would raise billions to fight global poverty and help reduce public deficits, well, it’s game on.

The Robin Hood campaign has launched this week with a nice video viral directed by Richard Curtis and starring Bill Nighy.  It’s a very good use of celebrities for a campaign – don’t just get their names, get them to do something. Interesting to see how this one goes. Here’s the video:

Rob Dyson also has some interesting observations on the PR dimensions of this little episode. He makes the good point that currently social media makes it easy to organise campaigns where people feel strongly against something. Certainly tapping into the British public’s contrarian vent and humour with a small campaign ask, can achieve remarkable results in a short time period. But, as Rob notes, we are still a long way from seeing social media making a big impact for “unsexy” but vitally important issues such as equality for disabled people.