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Hitwise Intelligence - Robin Goad - UK

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Will Motorway Man swing to the Lib Dems?

April 21, 2010

Earlier in the week I highlighted the impact of the ‘Clegg Effect’ on traffic to the Liberal Democrats' website, and this has also been reflected in the most recent polls. However, the first past the post electoral system that we have in the UK means that where the parties pick up votes is as important as the actual number they receive. In particular, they need to win votes in marginal constituencies.

In order to achieve this, the parties target key voter groups that are well represented in those marginal constituencies, and this election the most talked about group is Motorway Man. This group was identified by Experian using the Mosaic classification system, and consists of Mosaic Groups H – New Homemakers (defined as ‘Young singles and couples in small modern starter homes’) and some sections of G – Careers and Kids (‘families with young children where both parents are likely to earn solid incomes providing for a comfortable modern home’).

Motorway Man is heavily influenced by personality politics and the new best thing, and is more concerned about the economy than public services or healthcare. The three tables below illustrate the segmentation of visitors to each of the main political party home pages by Experian Mosaic Group over the last four weeks. As you can see, both Groups H and G are over-represented as visitors to the Liberal Democrats homepage – in fact H is currently the top group for the Lib Dems. Group H is also over-represented on the Labour homepage, but under represented for the Conservatives; while the opposite is true for Group G.

So does this mean that the Lib Dems are winning Motorway Man from the Tories and Labour? Of course, visits to political websites do not equal votes - and most people don’t visit political party websites, regardless of who they plan to vote for. However, this data does provide some interesting indicators, such as the fact that Group O – Liberal Opinions (broadly speaking, younger people with liberal social attitudes living in cities) are over-represented on each of the major parties sites, indicating a high level of curiosity with the political process.

The tables also indicate the groups that are least engaged with the process. All of the following groups under index as visitors to all of the main political party homepages: J – Claimant Cultures (‘Families on benefits living in low rise council housing where there is widespread disadvantage’), K- Upper Floor Living (‘Young, mostly single people on small incomes renting small flats from local councils’), L – Elderly Needs (‘Elderly people who are reliant on support either through specialised accommodation or the basic state pension’), Ex-Council Community (‘Residents with low levels of education but sufficient incomes, who live in the better right to buy council houses’), and M – Industrial Heritage (‘Families and couples owning affordable older housing in communities historically dependent on manufacturing’).

The one thing that all these groups have in common is that none of them belong to what you might call the ‘Metropolitan Elite’ or ‘Chattering Classes’. While this may point towards a disengagement from politics, it could simply be a reflection of the type of people that choose to visit political party homepages.

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