Jeremy Corbyn
It all happened with a sense of enormous urgency, with the coincidence of the Labour Party banning me from even applying to be the candidate, Sunak calling a general election, the Labour machine imposing a candidate, and my announcing I’d run as an independent. That meant we started on that day with absolutely nothing except our determination, but we very quickly built up a campaign of good friends and supporters: rented an office, staffed it very quickly, and within a few days had a canvassing system in operation.
Putting us some distance behind — as one of the polls did — actually encouraged people to come and help, so we ultimately got more support from that.
We then appealed for volunteers, of which hundreds came along and joined in the campaign, and we managed to actually physically speak to more than half the electorate during the course of the campaign, which is almost unprecedented. That was by intensive door-knocking, as well as what we called dynamic canvassing, where you’d be on the street or at an event, talk to people, and if they wanted to support us, they could register that support.
On polling day, we had a very sophisticated operation, with teams allocated to all of the polling districts with knocking-up sheets and rotors, and we turned out somewhere near eighty 80 percent of our promised vote. Obviously, there were many people who we’d not contacted who also voted for us, and interestingly our canvassed returns pretty accurately reflected the result we got. The opinion polling done during the campaign was misleading, and we questioned the methodology of it anyway. Putting us some distance behind — as one of the polls did — actually encouraged people to come and help, so we ultimately got more support from that.
The distinctive feature of the campaign was not necessarily the mechanics that I’ve just…
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Auteur: Jeremy Corbyn
