Previous posts – ‘It begins again‘, ‘The candidates (Part 1)‘, ‘The candidates (Part 2)‘
So far, I have explained some of the finer points of the HUU election process, as well as taking a look at candidates and the positions available. Now I’m going to take a look at what happened during the days reserved for polling and capaigning.
Photo taken by David Morris (Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike)
Activity
Over the years, there has been many different ways to get potential voters interested, but there has also been some trends that occur every time. There has been some highly visible campaign teams and also candidates who have struggled to make themselves known. I have also seen some questionable interpretations of the rules at time.
In recent times, there seems to have been less of a physical presence made by the various campaign teams. It has been suggested that this is because of the online voting. In the past, there was polling stations situated in places like the Library and the Student Union building. However, that doesn’t happen now and students make use of the university’s portal instead. The upside is that voter turnout has increased dramatically, but I still think a physical presence should be there aswell to increase the turnout even more. If there are no people on the ground to explain policies and talk about the candidates to prospective voters, a valuable method of persuasion is lost.
Some students haven’t always liked crowds of people trying to give them loads of colourful flyers and stickers, but as long as people are polite and calm (i.e. not ‘in your face’), there shouldn’t be any problems.
Some candidates have realised the importance of the above and gone out there for long periods of time. From what I have seen, there hasn’t been a huge amount of noise or movement from them. This could mean one of two things. Either there is a lack of motivation and they are just letting prospective voters pass by, or they are doing things properly and not being too ‘in your face’.
Today (the penultimate day of campaigning), I saw almost no teams from lunchtime onwards. At the University of Hull, Wednesdays are specially reserved for sports and no lectures, seminars or labs are supposed to take place. Presumably, the candidates and teams felt that nobody would be there to persuade. Either that or they just wanted a break. Maybe it was a combination of the two. The fact is, even though there wasn’t as many students walking around the campus, there was still some and I would consider that several opportunities lost.
The way I see it, you would expect more people to be around the Union on a Wednesday because of the lack of academic activity, which means it’s one of the more important days to be out there selling yourself or your candidate.
Gimmicks
Campaigning outside the student union
In the video above, you can see an example of the sort of gimmicks that you’re likely to see at the elections. The intention is to get the attention of the prospective voter so they come over to you. They you can persuade them to vote for the candidate. It’s a common tactic used in student unions across the country, but some people can go a little over the top. Some students feel that some gimmicks can get in the way of the policies and actually dissuade them from coming over to talk.
Here’s an example of a gimmick from a couple of years ago. Would that sort of thing make you ask about the relevant candidate, or would you keep clear?
Polling
Photo taken by David Morris (Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike)
It’s impossible to tell what the turnout will be like at the moment because there are no polling stations on campus, which means there are no queues and crowds around relevant areas. A member of one campaign team that I spoke to thinks that the turnout might be lower this year because the re-elections aspect has reduced the number of candidates and the general interest. There is some definite logic in that. The results night will show everyone if that theory could be true or not.
Finally…
I think the level of campaigning this year is similar to what I witnessed last year. However, changes to the Constitution means that the voter turnout won’t necessarily be the same. Some campaign teams and candidates don’t seem to have put in a huge amount of effort and that increases the chance of there being several tight races.
The polling closes at 7.30pm on Thursday (tomorrow) and the results event should start at about 8pm (thanks to Jon Chambers for letting me know about that). I’ll be there and a post about the results should follow the next day.
So, what do you think?