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Are manifesto sales a guide to election results?

By Angela Harbutt
May 4th, 2010 at 12:29 pm | 6 Comments | Posted in Election, UK Politics

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?

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