POLLY BILLINGTON:            Those that say Middle England 
is a place only to be found in the minds of politicians should come to 
Welwyn Garden City.  Labour and the Tories are making ever more sophisticated 
efforts to identify the few hundred thousand people in similar marginal 
seats who are open to persuasion about which way to vote at the next election.

FRASER KEMP MP:                If we don't win the marginal 
seats then we have a serious problem and you know there are that number 
of seats within the electoral map of Britain which make a very substantial 
difference, decide the outcome of the next general election.  So I think 
all political parties are going to view them very, very carefully.  

BILLINGTON:                Elections aren't about the 
whole country - the result is actually in the hands of only a few voters 
in only some constituencies. Targeting them has become a crucial part of 
every main party's electoral strategy. Welwyn Hatfield was a target seat 
for Labour last time, identified as winnable by them even though the Tories 
- wrongly - believed they could hold it without putting in any extra national 
effort. It's in seats like this that next time both Labour and the Tories 
will directing much of their national resources.
Tory foot-soldiers are already doing battle in Welwyn Hatfield. To have 
a majority in the House of Commons the Conservatives need to win this and 
a hundred-and-sixty-four more seats. That's a lot of targets.   It's unlikely 
they can direct an equal amount of effort into all of them. 

CERI EVANS:                I doubt - and I'll be very 
surprised - if they choose to target a hundred-and-sixty seats.  I would 
think they'll focus much more ruthlessly than that and put their efforts 
into those seats.

BILLINGTON:                Labour has also taken on a 
mammoth task - to defend all those seats it won last time. Privately they 
concede some seats will probably fall. Their troops are likely to be carefully 
deployed where the party's got most chance of holding on. But publicly 
they claim they have a hundred and eighty so-called strategic seats.

KEMP:                    We're going to be going out 
to fight and win in those 180 seats, we've got one big advantage that we 
didn't have in 1997 and that is that we've got sitting Labour MPs in those 
seats, Labour MPs who've been working hard, communicate with the electorate, 
and making sure that they get Labour's national message across, and that's 
a tremendous advantage that we've never had in the past.  

PETER KELLNER:                What any party strategist 
would love to have is a really reliable crystal ball which will tell them 
which of the ten, twenty, thirty seats which at the end of an election 
campaign will be the knife-edge seats and to pour all their resources in 
to that small number of seats to try and wring out the last possible vote. 
 The trouble is when you make your dispositions before the election campaign 
starts at the beginning, you can't be sure which are gonna be the knife-edge 
seats.  

BILLINGTON:                Once you've chosen your seat 
you must identify the voters, like Tony Willis, that will make the difference 
between victory and defeat. Targeting has always happened; this time all 
the parties are being more sophisticated in their approach. More than ever 
before, they'll be focussing their efforts on the people who changed their 
mind last time.

TONY WILLIS:                A number of things changed 
my mind and made me vote Labour in the Nineties.  One was the sense of 
government arrogance and a very long time in power.  

BILLINGTON:                Call centres like this one 
are crucial to finding all the Tony Willises in the country. Labour had 
a national call centre last time - now the Tories have just established 
their own called Geneva; they want to have sixty volunteers calling twelve 
hours a day reaching as many floating voters as possible.

EVANS:                    Not everybody in politics 
likes the simplicity of this - it is a marketing decision.  And it is a 
targeting, marketing decision.  And you have to concentrate your fire power 
in a narrower, perhaps more concentrated field than simply spreading it 
about.

BILLINGTON:                Both main parties are going 
to ensure the literature that floating voters get is targeted to their 
priorities. If the messages are personalised addressing your own main concerns, 
the parties reckon you're more likely to pay attention.

EVANS:                    To receive something through 
the mail that directly addresses your concerns, your issues and plays into 
your values, has a huge impact. You think, well there's somebody who knows 
what I'm thinking and is inside my head and understand what's important 
to me and my family.  So, it can have a huge impact.  

BILLINGTON:                National telemarketing and 
direct mail isn't a hit with everyone; the Liberal Democrats believe it 
can be counterproductive as well as being beyond their financial means.

LORD RENNARD:                Liberal Democrats won't use 
a national call centre.  If you are a floating voter perhaps in a marginal 
seat, you might be receiving calls from a national headquarters of the 
Conservative or Labour parties, irritating you, as they phone you up from 
London and tell you how you must vote. Liberal Democrats prefer to do things 
the local way.

BILLINGTON:                It's not just listening though 
- it's also about responding to the information gleaned by the call centres 
and the direct mailshots.  The national message will be tailored to the 
concerns of those voters who will count.

KEMP:                    One aspect of the direct 
mailing is to ensure that you get feedback and people are invited to give 
their views and feedback into the party machine and feedback into the candidates 
what their concerns are and you clearly listen very carefully as to what 
electors are saying. 

BILLINGTON:                Tony Willis will be snowed 
under by such mailshots in the next few months. He voted Labour last time 
despite being a loyal Tory during the Eighties, and he still hasn't yet 
decided how he'll vote next time. So his phoneline and his doormat will 
be battlegrounds between the two main parties. 

WILLIS:                    I think it's probably likely 
to reinforce my prejudices one way or the other, and I suspect that I'll 
form my main views from Press, from talking to people, from TV coverage 
and general background.  You can get a high irritation factor from some 
of the standard literature.

BILLINGTON:                Despite his scepticism Tony 
Willis is favoured with so much attention. Other voters' concerns can get 
sidelined. Some people argue that the demographic profile of floating voters 
isn't as diverse as the rest of the electorate. Middle England's worries 
can overshadow everyone else's, leaving issues that are important in safer 
seats out of the game altogether.

OONA KING:                    What actually concerns 
me is that my party to an extent has to concentrate on issues that come 
up there, but for example may not be the issues that come up in a city 
seat which is a safe Labour seat. And therefore what is the point in the 
Labour Party concentrating its efforts in that area, I think it is wrong, 
I think the whole system is wrong, it is equally wrong for Tories in areas 
where it is a safe Tory seat.  It is wrong for anyone who isn't that tiny 
percentage of key voters who may swing their vote in a marginal seat.

EVANS:                    I don't personally have 
a concern that floating voters can disproportionately affect the messaging, 
and therefore the result, and therefore the kind of country we live in 
- because, I think we're in the middle of a trend where increasingly people 
of a limiting number of demographic backgrounds are sharing, values - we've 
talked about health and education, law and order, transport and so on. 


BILLINGTON:                Unlike the Tories, Labour are 
worried about getting their core voters to the polls and so have launched 
Operation Turnout. They believe their traditional support isn't disillusioned 
so much as complacent about Labour getting back in. It's the biggest threat 
to them winning next time. The party will try to scare them about the chances 
of the Tories winning to get their natural supporters out to vote. 

KEMP:                    We have to ensure that we 
enthuse people, but at the same time as getting our message across, we've 
got to constantly remind people, particularly our core voters of what the 
real dangers of letting the Tories back in would be and I think that has 
to form part of the message that we get across.

BILLINGTON;                But the big political messages 
will be coming through Tony Willis' letterbox on a regular basis. The parties 
reckon localising big issues like health and education is the way to sway 
the least tribal of voters. It's the way our electoral system works. Votes 
in safe seats count for much less than votes in marginal ones. 

KEMP:                    I think there is recognition 
amongst Labour voters that they realise they cannot have a Labour government 
by simply returning rock solid Labour members of parliament in safe seats 
and what they've got to do is go out and win middle England.

KING:                        I think it is a scandal, 
honestly that in a democracy so many of our votes effectively don't count, 
that is why we have got to change the system.  I mean in 1997 if just a 
hundred-and-sixty-eight-thousand voters, Labour voters in ninety of the 
key seats had changed their vote, then Labour wouldn't have had a majority. 
 Now that is just half a per cent of the electorate.  What about the rest 
of us, what about the other ninety-nine point five per cent.

BILLINGTON:                As the election looms closer 
all the main parties will be stepping up their efforts to identify who 
they need to speak to, in which seats, and what they need to talk about. 
But do key seat strategies work?   Literally, right next to door to Welwyn 
Hatfield is St Albans, also a Labour win last time. Now despite not being 
a target seat and therefore not having national resources directed at it, 
Labour achieved a bigger swing here in St Albans, than they did in Welwyn 
Hatfield. 

KELLNER;                    The 1997 election campaign 
was not only dazzling and dramatic and record breaking in all sorts of 
ways, it went a long way to puncturing the myth of the key seats strategy 
of fighting elections.  In all sorts of places around Britain you'd have 
one seat where Labour and the Tories had put in masses of effort because 
they thought that they were marginal seats, only to discover on the night 
that Labour won them by a mile, only to find next door there was a seat 
that neither party had particularly targeted which turned in to a knife-edge 
contest.  

KEMP:                    The benefit of hindsight 
is great in politics, and you can never be sure until after the event, 
what would have happened, you know, had you done 'x' or 'y', I think what 
you've got to do, is work on the assumption that elections are always going 
to be fairly tough, are always going to be hard fought, and just to try 
and ensure that you can win a majority in parliament.

BILLINGTON:                Pushing the right buttons to 
enthuse floating voters won't win a majority on its own. But political 
parties believe in the strategy enough to intensify their approach ready 
for the next election; even though it's an approach that can mean others 
voters' concerns are left out in the cold.