Are manifesto sales a guide to election results?
Here’s a thought. I read over on the CNN website that sales of parties manifestos have reached record levels for this election. As they say – no apathy here then.
It reads….
“Now evidence of this comes with news that election manifestos – the documents in which political parties lay out their planned policies – are selling in record numbers, according to book trade media.
“Political manifesto sales at Waterstone’s have already outstripped those during the entire 2005 election period,” reported UK trade paper The Bookseller.com, “up 160 percent with just eight days to go to the election.”
Andrew Lake, politics buyer for Waterstone’s , one of the UK’s leading booksellers, said: “This is clearly the most important election in a generation. I’ve worked in books for nearly 20 years and have never seen such demand for manifestos.”
The report goes on to say that , the Conservatives have taken 38% of manifesto sales so far, followed by the Liberal Democrats on 32% and Labour on 30%. What is impressive (and perhaps not surprising given what we have seen in the past few weeks) Liberal Democrat manifesto sales are up a whopping 250% !
Does that count for anything I wonder?
May 4th, 2010 at 2:00 pm
Remember that this is one of the easiest elections ever to get manifestos online; more people are reading them than have just bought them in stores.
I wouldn’t worry about the Tory sales. It should come as no surprise that Conservative voters are often quite wealthy and many order the manifesto as a matter of course for any election.
May 4th, 2010 at 2:16 pm
worth noting that WHSmiths aren’t selling them in a lot of branches this year, I used to get mine from there. So waterstones sales might be up because others aren’t selling them. Regardless, sales up despite available free online
May 4th, 2010 at 2:16 pm
I think that a more interesting figure on this subject is the number nicked.
The Tories must have lost a lot to those eager hoodies that need a hug and single mums they are promising to help.
But then again a truely Big Society would make such information available at no charge.
May 4th, 2010 at 6:32 pm
Bill – that is truly cynical!
And matgb as far as i understand it the sales recorded are collated from all book shops – in which case Duncan’s point about it being easier than ever to get them on line makes the hard copy sales figures even more astounding. Well we’ll see on Friday if manifesto sales are the new YOUGOV!
May 4th, 2010 at 6:37 pm
Both the linked stories talk about Waterstones only sales. I’ve no doubt they’re up, at all, but it may be that less outlets were selling them this time because they (wrongly) thought turnout and interest would’ve fallen further; some of us were always predicting much higher interest, but even I wasn’t this optimistic…
May 5th, 2010 at 10:36 pm
MatGB…. you might be right…it was a bit of fun (is “fun” still legal).