Its looking more and more likely that senate voting reforms will be approved and a double dissolution called, with that in mind shouldn’t you change your campaign strategy to reflect these changes in the system. As nice as it is to spread yourselves over every state and try and run candidates there is just no way you can create enough exposure for your policies. It’s a bit of a cynical way of looking at things but surely it would make more sense to pour all of your money in to 1 state and focus on getting as much of the vote there as possible, getting people to volunteer just in 1 state then once you have a senator your policies would create their own publicity and a big enough media profile in order to expand nationally.
The state I would suggest focusing on Tasmania where you would just need 24000 (potentially as low as 15000 assuming preferences) votes to win a senate seat. Not only is Tasmania the lowest ratio of voters to senators but it’s also the places where you got the best results percentage wise and came closest to getting a senator last election.
You could also afford to run a candidate in every house of representative seat, which would raise the numbers of voters in the senate by simplifying voting for less informed voters. Also you would no longer look like a joke protest party trying to pull a random senate victory through gaming the system.
It would allow you to focus advertisements and message to just Tasmania, and it’s one of the states that would benefit the most from your proposed basic income. You could also appeal to a strong base of green voters who have previously got significantly greater results in representative seats than in mainland states.
I understand that by running in each state it allows people across Australia to engage financially and volunteer locally, but its seems like pissing in to the wind, there was very little chance of getting a senate seat with 0.5% of the vote and this possible double dissolution is the best chance you have of actually winning something and getting your platform out there.
I would tend to agree with the idea of running only in Tasmania, although it’s worth mentioning that our campaign strategy has never been based on playing group voting tickets to our advantage, nor have we ever run in every state in a single election. The 2013 Federal Election was a good way for us to test our support, and I do agree that Tasmania would be our best hope in the event of a double dissolution.
While Tasmania gives us the strongest probability of winning a seat, I think that focusing on Tasmania to the exclusion of other states will hurt our campaign and long term ambitions.
We need to demonstrate that the Pirate Party is here for the long run, so that people will stop looking at us as a joke party. We appeared in most states during the last election, and disappearing from a state now will leave us looking like many of the pop-up micro-parties that plagued the last election. Standing in every state for the next election will be important to demonstrating the long term credentials of the Pirate Party.
We have volunteers all over Australia. Most of them can really only assist in their own state. What we need to do is promote the Pirate Platform in lead-up to the election. We need to let voters see that we actually have serious policy offerings. It is what sets us apart from most of the other parties in the election (including both Labor and Liberals)
I can see some value in assigning additional resources to a Tasmanian campaign, but I do not think we should overly focus our efforts.
We are holding the first election committee meeting today (March 9) in IRC on the #ppau-election channel. At this stage it is to see if we have enough interest to form separate state lection committees and to plan in the most general of terms, the election campaign. Come along if you are interested!
I will make sure everyone knows about this thread. Targeting Tasmania certainly has its merits.
I think you are absolutely right we need to let voters
understand our policy offering it’s by far our greatest asset. But spending a
majority of our finances on Candidate nomination fees in major states where we then
can’t afford to advertise and get our message out there just seems illogical.
I think our support base is so small) that we really have
nothing to lose by not running candidates. Then on top of that if we plan on
changing our name between the next election all the work that goes in to
building our support base this election will be for nothing.
The media coverage and attention we would get for winning a
senate seat would be massive, and having someone to be able to articulate our
policy platform to the media and the public would be such a great benefit to
us.
The opportunity is just too big to miss; no other parties
seem to be targeting Tasmania (except maybe Jackie Lambie Network) and this
election we may only need half the support of any other election.
The two territories have elections this year. If brand recognition is so hard won then it seems to me it would be prudent to also concentrate party efforts there with our party brand recent in voter minds. As for Tasmania, I’ll leave that to more experienced voices.