How effective are political flyers in persuading young voters? By Sharanya Narasimhan, Wimbledon High School

This quotation caught my eye on a political pamphlet as it was slipped through my door, and I was struck by the hyperbolic nature of the statement. I was curious as to where the pamphlet was going with this, and whether there were any facts to back up this wild assertion, so I began to read further.

As the local ward elections across London draw closer, I'm sure many of you like me have received numerous political pamphlets (varying depending on where you live). Intrigued by the first pamphlet (which was from the Conservative Party), I decided to read further and ended up with three political pamphlets for three different parties: Conservatives, Liberal Democrats and Labour. Whilst all three pamphlets employed similar tactics to try and persuade their readers for their vote, there were some clear differences between the content of each party's pamphlet. Here is my summary of each pamphlet:

Conservatives - As seen with the quotation on the front of the pamphlet, the Tory's  main standpoint was to constantly insult and criticise the other two parties, without adding any real information on any strategies or policies they planned to implement should they win. A quote from the back 'But the Labour Council are determined to turn Wimbledon into the new Croydon' sums up the Conservatives' strategy as the back of the pamphlet consisted solely of running down Labour . The one piece of information that the pamphlet offered as to what the Conservatives planned to do was 'SCRAP the Future Wimbledon plan' and 'develop a new, exciting, sympathetic, and green vision'.

Labour - Perhaps the most informative and least critical of other parties pamphlet, the Labour pamphlet was informative. It contained information on both what Labour has already done in Merton and a relatively detailed (compared to the other two pamphlets) five point plan on what they plan to do, including plans for education, health, 'quality housing', 'inclusive economy' and sustainability. This pamphlet also contained a bar graph summarising the results of the May 2021 GLA results for Wimbledon Constituency, with the only critical remark being 'Remember only Labour can beat the Tories in Wimbledon'.

Liberal Democrats - This pamphlet was a mixture of both informative content and put downs of the two other parties. They key phrase on the front of the largest pamphlet out of the three, was 'Labour can't win in Wimbledon' followed by 'Everyone knows elections in our area are a clear choice between the hard-working local Lib Dem team and Boris Johnson's Conservatives.' In addition to this, the pamphlet contained a bar graph similar to the one in the Labour pamphlet, but containing statistics from the 2019 General Election result in Wimbledon. This showed drastically different results to the more recent statistics in the Labour pamphlet, with Labour at 24% and Lib Dem at 37% whereas the other graph had Lib Dem at 19% and Labour at 28%. This was incredibly confusing and misleading. The pamphlet also utilised the growing dissatisfaction of the current Conservative handling of the cost of living crisis, something the Conservative pamphlet did not even mention.

This brings me on to my question, is the outreach and communication from political parties effective to engage young people? Does discrediting and insulting your opposing parties appeal to the younger voters? Or are they more convinced by pledges, strategies or potential policies? Something that struck me was over the course of the week that these pamphlets were delivered to my house, I did not receive any Green Party pamphlets. I found this to be a striking omission, considering one if not the most important issue for young voters, is what politicians are doing about saving our planet. When asked about the Conservative party pamphlet, 15 year old Wimbledon resident Lara Kerr said 'This pamphlet seems to spread fear and hate as oppose to creating a fair and diplomatic environment in which the best candidate can be voted for'.

Our city faces a lot of challenges and young voters are rightly expecting politicians to solve these. People running for elections need to come across as credible, as voters are placing their trust in them. It is concerning to see that not all parties are focused on solving the issues for voters and are instead using their platform to criticise and put down other parties.