The Conservative Election Campaign

Abstract

Well before the constituency declarations were complete for the 2010 general election, the Conservative Party realised that it had not done enough in order to govern alone. In effect the party came so agonisingly close, falling short of that overall target of 326 House of Commons seats by just 19. Indeed, one analysis established that just 16,000 extra votes, of the 29.7 million cast, distributed in the 19 constituency seats where the Conservatives had come closest to winning, would have secured the outright victory the party had so desired since it last won at Westminster in 1992 (Railings and Thrasher, 2010). One has no difficulty in applying a positive gloss to the actual result, with the Conservatives obtaining a 4 per cent swing and a net gain of 97 seats, as undoubtedly the party had faced a psephological mountain, the size of which no other Conservative leader had overcome since the 1931 general election. However, much of the shine is lost when we consider the context of the 2010 election. In Gordon Brown Britain had one of the most disliked Labour Party Prime Ministers of all time and with the nation in the depth of an economic crisis the Conservative Party had the opportunity to exploit and utilise that most potent of campaign slogans: ‘time for a change’. In a survey just weeks before the election was announced 68 per cent thought Britain needed a new government and prime minister. Unfortunately, throughout the campaign the Conservatives would never see this level of opinion translated directly into support for them or their leader David Cameron.