Mass waste, young targets

The two main political parties have launched their mass activities in the run-up to the general election. Their Sunday mass meetings are very old style and jar within the context on the emphasis on new beginnings, change and whatnot. They are little more than social occasions and a wide platform from which to unfold and repeat the party electoral programme and message, pitched at a much wider audience. The job of the parties at this stage is not to preach to the converted but to chase the decisive marginal vote.

Mass meetings attract part of the hardcore of supporters. The parties cannot be seen to take that hardcore for granted. They whip up its enthusiasm while being careful that they do not peak too soon before Election Day.

Nevertheless, it is granted that the hardcore will be there. The Labour hardcore will vote on Election Day practically to the last person. The Nationalist hardcore will also reassemble, bar a few hundred still intent to stay away from the ballot or to go there to give a protest vote to Alternattiva Demokratika or Alleanza Nazzjonali.

The hardcores represent the critical mass but will not be enough to win the election.

Victory will depend at the margin on a number of minorities. The Nationalists will work assiduously to persuade, practically on an individual basis, known doubters plus a resentful element.

They will go after voters with a grudge over implications to the environment of ongoing and planned construction.

The Gonzi factor will provide the main tug at those voters, one of the reasons why the PN has been rebranded as Gonzi-PN and why Lawrence Gonzi is standing for the ninth district.

The genuine floaters, in the final analysis no more than 2,000 or so, will be focused upon by both main parties, but in a different manner.

The Nationalists will use the Gonzi branding, coupled with fear-mongering based on how they depict Alfred Sant, project Labour's past and interpret the MLP's present.

Labour will stress bad governance by the Nationalist government and the party's collective team and developing themes. There will be no specific Alfred Sant branding but the leader will still be projected strongly, though not in the presidential-contest style favoured by the PN.

At the end of the day the same approach used to target floaters cannot be used to address those who, I believe, will really decide the election result - the 17,000 or so new voters.

They may read about the - especially for them - distant past of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, but they will care little for it. They will hardly recall the Labour government of 1996-98, having been about nine to 12 years old at the time. Above all, the new voters tend to care little about politics.

They will probably see them as prehistoric politics. Nevertheless, the young do have their issues and concerns and it is these that will have to be identified by the parties. That will have to be done through focus groups, leading to conclusions and through them approaches that will have to be devised specifically for them.

There will be more mass meetings in the coming three weeks. In relation to the final result, they will be more waste of time.