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- Wear comfortable shoes – you could be walking for up to 15 hours, them on your feet at a count for hours more.
- Wear high-factor sun cream and/or carry an umbrella given the vagaries of May weather.
- Rest activists from doorstep work by getting them to make phone calls for an hour while having a cup of tea.
- The room where you are organising the get out the vote effort needs to be a calm, efficient place. Therefore resting and chatting activists need to be told to get out and sit in a different room, or a neighbouring cafe, or better still given another round of knocking up to do.
- Everything you do needs to be focussed on achieving a differentially higher turnout of Labour supporters. Any other activity is a distraction. Untargeted activity such as use of loudhailers wakes up opposition voters too, unless it is in a very, very solidly Labour area. Number taking at polling stations is only worthwhile if you have so many activists that you can also visit and knock up voters – if you have to choose, do the knocking up blind (WARP – Without All those Reading Pads) and scrap the number taking.
- Early in the day visit areas where there are plenty of people not at work. You need to get this section of voters to turn out before 6pm so you can focus all your effort after 6pm on people who have been at work. Also do early visits to older people who may need car lifts (which takes time) or be reluctant to go out once it gets dark.
- Peak time for voting is early evening so do not do what one CLP I’ve visited on polling day did and clock off for an hour for a polling day supper.
- As the day closes, progressively focus your remaining Get Out the Vote efforts on low turnout areas with a heavy concentration of Labour voters, and then at the very end on the streets immediately near to polling stations.
- Don’t stop knocking up Labour supporters until just before close of poll at 10pm. Close elections are won and lost in the final minutes by a handful of extra voters.
- The count is part of the election, not a social event. If you are there as party counting agent you have jobs to do – spotting that Labour votes are not put in the opposition parties’ piles by mistake, and at verification stage “sampling” – doing a tally of the first 50 votes you see from a given polling station – which helps predict the result and gives valuable tactical information for future elections about where Labour’s vote is strongest.
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