In this edition of Candidate’s Briefing, we have another three crucial things that you should be doing now to help make sure you win next May.
- Agreeing your campaign messages. One of the most important things you need to do is decide which key things you want the voters in your ward to know about you and the Lib Dems when they go and vote. These themes should then run through all of the leaflets that you do between now and polling day. You can read a post about working out your messages on the ALDC members-only site, including a sample message grid to help you out.
- Thank your helpers. It’s important to keep thanking your helpers all year round, especially after polling day. But with the cold and snowy weather, now is another good time to thank your members. You could send them all a Christmas card, or alternatively go and visit them all. If you can afford it, getting them a small present or treat is also a nice thing to do. It means they know you really do appreciate their efforts, and will make them feel they want to continue. Given the negative publicity the party is getting in some of the national press, keeping up the morale of party activists has never been so important.
- Sort out your campaign plan. If you haven’t drawn up your campaign plan for the lead up to next year’s elections then now is the time to do it. After Christmas, the time running up to the election will just fly by and so having a clear plan of what you need to do is even more crucial if it isn’t already organised. We have some good examples of ward campaign plans on our website for places at two different stages of development. These should hopefully point you in the right direction for creating your own plan. You can find out more here.
Here are a few other useful bits of information for you for next year’s elections:
Next year’s Royal Wedding means that we are likely to gain an extra public holiday on 29th April 2011. As this has yet to be officially confirmed it means that the Electoral Commission aren’t able to say for certain whether this will affect the election timetable. However, our advice is to assume that the day of the Royal Wedding will be a ‘dies non’, in other words a day that is discounted when working out the election timetable. For example, the deadline for registering to vote is 11 days before polling day, but this excludes all weekends and ‘dies non’. So, assume that any deadlines before 29th April will now be one day earlier than originally planned. From a practical point of view it now means there will be two ‘long’ weekends just before polling day for you to get lots of campaigning done, as 22-25th April is the Easter Weekend and 29th April to 2nd May is the Royal Wedding and May Day weekend.
Don’t forget that ALDC members can download lots of template artwork and best practice from our website. Not only do these save you from having to reinvent the wheel, but they can also provide you with inspiration for your next leaflet. Either go to the Best Practice or Templates sections of our website, or log-in to our File Library where you can view many years’ worth of example artwork.