The cost of a marginal seat - what a 5 per cent swing will set you back in Newton Abbot

By PRSD, on Thursday, April 8, 2010

Ever wondered what a 5 per cent swing in the General Election might cost? Newton Abbot Conservative candidate Anne Marie Morris needs around a 5 per cent swing to win the new Newton Abbot seat. We took a look at what she’s spent on her local press campaign alone! Phew, it’s more than a pretty penny, we can tell you!

Anne Marie has been running ads in Newton Abbot and Teignbridge weekly Mid-Devon Advertiser series since June last year (we asked her campaign office).

For our rough calculations we took the starting date as Friday, June 5. And, because we’re generous, we took two issues off the Mid-Devon Advertiser for the Christmas period. So, up to Friday, April 2 that’s 42 issues!

The Mid-Devon Advertiser half-page rate is £878.4 (shockingly expensive, we know – it’s £1,756.80 for a full page!). Her ad is less than half a page, but she’ll probably pay for the position at the bottom of page 2. Then again, she’ll probably have got a discount for the block booking.

Just to be fair, let’s say that she’s handing over £500 per week for the ad in the local paper.

So to date, we calculate 42 x £500 = a whopping £21,000!

Anne Marie Morris’s Expenses Promise says: ‘Amongst the pledges are commitments to publish her personal and office expenses on her personal website and open up her unedited expenses claims to local newspapers a the end of every financial year.’

Hmm, what kind of scrutiny can we expect from a paper that’s pocketed more than £20K from a political candidate?

Remember that this is just based on the ads in the local press – not any of the mailouts, pamphlets or other running costs of a campaign. And of course, we may be wrong, these are our rough calculations after we stumbled upon the Mid-Devon Advertiser rate card. If you’ve got any info that can help our calculations drop us a line.

According to the UK Polling Report site, the results for the 2005 election were: Lib Dems 27,808 (45.7%); Conservative: 21,593 (35.5%); Labour: 6,931 (11.4%); UKIP: 3,881 (6.4%); Other: 685 (1.1%). There was a majority of 6,215 or 10.2 per cent.

That means to get the 3,000 people she needs for the 5 per cent swing Anne Marie is spending around £7 per vote.

• What are the other candidates spending? The Labour fella in Torquay has apparently got just £1,200 for his whole campaign (and how much of that is going towards bus fare to Exeter to support Ben Bradshaw?). Comments below, please

(We have offered to run Anne Marie’s columns on the PRSD for free. And we’re open to advertising from political parties, but maybe our rates are just too low…)

(Image: Anne Marie Morris ad in the Mid-Devon Advertiser. Note Richard Younger-Ross’s small ad next to it!)

Come and enjoy Devon – book a hotel and get away!

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John

The limit of around £30K is not for the final year before the election, it is for what is known as the 'short campaign'. This is the period after the election is called. It is impossible to know when the one year leading up to the general election will be, unless a government will go to its maximum term. The previous comment was evidently made by a person with no real experience of politics. I have no link to the candidate in question or her party, but the idea that she is paying '£7 per vote' is utterly preposterous. Maybe you should be examining the integrity of the person that she so brilliantly won a majority over, while bucking all national trends. The editorial on this website is utterly shambolic.

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finn

How much has it cost to get Royal Mail to deliver all the glossy leaflets.

PRSD

Hi Tom

Glad you dropped by, and thanks for the comment.

£100 for an advert in the MDA? Check out the rate card (we were using an old one, btw).
http://www.nsdatabase.co.uk/newspaperdetail.cfm?pa...

Note that it's more than £10 per column centimetre, and even tho' the ad has three columns, the paper runs an 8 column grid, so in effect it should be charged across 5 columns.

Now take your ruler, and work out how tall it is. We made it 12cm.

So the sum is £10.9 x 12 x 5, which is £654.

Let's take 25 per cent off, because we're generous and it could be the discount for a block booking (that's £163.5), we get £490.5 per ad.

All you have to do now, is times that by the number of ads and voila, you've got the spend.

Even if the MDA did offer the column at £100 (which raises a whole raft-load of other questions), the expenses would have to show 90 per cent of the true value of the ad, which is £441.45... plus VAT.

And cheers, we've always enjoyed Newsround!

Tom

This article is complete nonsense. The price of an advert in the MDA is £100; he's over estimated the price by £16800!

This is the most poorly researched article outside of Newsround.

Nick

That looks very interesting-it seems very weird that nothing would be investigated until after the election-that seems to be the electoral commission's implication. And the £30k limit is for the 365 days leading up to the election. As you say if you get a discount then you have to treat it as a donation in kind.

Much though RYR is a bit of a shambles, it seems very unfair for the Tories to essentially try to buy this seat. Does anyone know if anything can be done?

Cptn

According to the Electoral Commission, the limit is £30,000 per constituency.

The Anne Marie Morris campaign have been onto us saying that we've 'overestimated by about five times'.

But we can't see the Mid-Devon Advertiser flogging that kind of space on page two for less than £500 when their full page rate is £1,756.80.

The blurb says: "Read Anne Marie’s views in her weekly column; an advertisement sponsored by Conservative supporters." And would fall under 'notional expenditure', which the Electoral Commission site also covers. Of course, if the ad is excessively discounted by the paper it will also fall under 'notional expenditure'.

Anyone bought an ad from the MDA before - do they offer such discounts?

Check out the Electoral Commission page:
http://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/elections/el...

Isn't there a legal limit you can spend on each campaign? I thought it was about £20-25k, I wonder what happens if the candidate spends more than that?