Winning a House of Reps seat: what it takes
Some thoughts on the tactics and requirements for an independent candidate to have a good chance at winning a division in the Australian House of Representatives at a general election.
- 2.8 million interactions. In advertising, a rule of thumb is the “rule of seven”, which says that a consumer will need to be exposed to an advertisement 7 times before they act on it. Applying this to election campaigns, I propose that 4 lots of 7 interactions between a voter and a candidate are required to win over a voter: 7 times before they know who the candidate is, another 7 times before they know what the candidate stands for, another 7 times to convince them to vote for you, and finally, 7 more times as a margin against the buckets of shit to be thrown by the major parties once they realise “their” seat is under threat. 28 interractions per voter, multiplied by the 100K voters in the average HoR seat means a candidate must aim for 2.8 million interactions to have a chance of building a winning base of votes.
- Or, to put it another way, 2500 interactions per day, assuming a full 3 years between elections. Yes, that’s a lot. Or, for a slightly more palatable number, it means a candidate has to interact with every voter in their electorate around once every 40 days.
- “Every Cobblestone” campaigning. This is the only strategy I have seen work where independent / 3rd party candidates don’t have an existing profile in the community. It was pioneered by the UK Liberal Democrats, and has been used successfully at least once in Australia to my knowledge (2001 South Sydney Council elections). The Lib Dems win seats in the UK House of Commons (under a far nastier electoral system than ours) by literally taking responsibility for just about every cobblestone in their district, and working on those issues. They then continuously communicate their efforts with the local community (by their “Focus” newsletters - see examples here), effectively ensuring elections are decided on local issues, rather than national ones.
- Win before the writs are issued. I do not think it possible for an independent / challenger candidate to win an election after writs have been issued, as the competition for the public’s attention will become too intense. They can only lose during the official campaign period. So a candidate must have a winning majority of votes prior to the election being called, and then must retain this lead through to polling day.
- Don’t rely on preferences. History has shown the major parties are willing to preference each other rather than a third party or independent challenger (e.g. ALP preferencing CDP/Libs ahead of Greens in the ‘02 Cunningham by-election, the ALP and Libs cross-preferencing to keep Janine Haines from winning Kingston in ‘90). This may not be universally true, depending on the actual slate of candidates in a particular division, but it would be unwise to base a campaign strategy around. This means a challenger candidate needs to realistically target and win 40-45% of the primary vote, and could rely on preference leakage to put them over the line.
- Subscription funding. All these interactions cost money - a good ballpark figure for a comprehensive campaign in a single House of Reps seat was around $100K back in 2001-ish, so a good figure for today would be around $150K. In terms of raising this money, this is (merely) $150 over three years from 1000 people (which is probably a bit hard to do in an electorate of 100K people considering even Barack Obama got only 0.5% of his voters to donate), or perhaps 200 people each giving $25/month over the entire three years, which seems more achievable. This sort of subscription-based fundraising can provide a solid revenue base to campaign from, topped up by larger donations or donations from other one-off events such as fund-raising dinners.
- Booth Coverage. Much as it irritates me, there’s a firm trend across party and time that votes will leak if voters are not able to get a candidates How-To-Vote cards. This means a volunteer pool of 4-5 people for each polling booth, plus pre-polling is required for polling day to maximize the “harvest” of the vote.
All this is written against the background of a candidate whose positions find broad agreement and support in the community to begin with - all the money in the world won’t get a racist candidate elected in inner city Sydney, for example.
