Three remarkable moves that contributed to the Tory win

by Benson Agoha

The election has come and gone, but it was one in which the parties played all their cards and by the evening of May 8th, the winner had taken it all.

No one thought things would end the way it did, not least Lib Dem’s Nick Clegg, who said on the night of March 27, during his opening speech at the Leaders Debate that:

“I think it is pretty obvious that no one standing here tonight is going to win this election outright, so you will have to choose, like you did last time who is going to work with whom…”

Analysts from the Labour camp are working hard to isolate what went wrong and to right it before the game is on again.

Some of the factors that contributed to the decisive win of the Conservative Party, against all expectations include:

A) Effective Use of Noise: By insisting on the 7-Party Leaders’ Debate, the conservative party ensured that all the major parties had a chance of being heard. But was the information too much for an electorate that has been used to focusing on two leaders from two major parties?

Effective use of noise helped because the deluge of party policies, many of which are similar but being presented with bogus descriptive words designed to make it unique, became just too much for them to process.

When the brain has too much information, it will either reject some, reject all or decide to maintain the statusquo. And the fact that good news continued to emerge from official statistics about the economy was enough to make a decision.

Take for example the first question asked by a student of politics by name Jonny Tudor during the Leaders Debate:

“How will each of the party leaders believe they will be able to keep their promises of eliminating the deficit without raising certain taxes or making vast cuts to vital services?”

All 7 party leaders had to answer this question in one minute, but how many of what was said by each of the seven leaders would you remember after 7 minutes, if you had not been taking note? So how much of that would you remember the next day?

B) That New Memorable Phrase: Whereas Ed Miliband was relishing his growing #Milifandom base, David Cameron’s `I am pumped-up for this election’ arrived in the nick of time to reverse this.  It has already a phrase of choice and a new vocabulary that is enjoying increasing patronage from writers.

“Taking a risk, having a pun, having a go – that pumps me up.” He told city workers that, with 10 days to go “If you think I’m gonna let Ed Miliband and Alex Salmond wreck that, you've got another thought coming.” David Cameron energetically told a group of City workers just a week before the election.

 C) Video Message: the short video Message made by David Cameron in which he asked the electorate to “vote for the Conservative Party” if they wanted him to remain in office. Was very effective. He said “Don’t vote for others and hope that I will win.”

Direct video messages never to fail to appeal, especially if it is correctly handled. And the short but direct message employed, helped to work the magic.

So with data about rising local auto manufacturing, increasing foreign direct Investment, rising profile for London as well as decreasing unemployment figures, strong indices that any government should be proud of, the Tories milked it for all its worth.

This goes to show that strategic deployment of noise, can swing the pendulum to your favour. It’s a matter of how.