Or should that question be which person has won hearts and minds?
Now more than ever, politics is about the people behind the policy and by that, I don’t mean the voters, I mean the leaders.
For many of the people stood at the polling booths today, the names on the ballot paper will be barely recognisable. Most UK voters do not really vote for their local politician or party, they are just not well known to them – that said, mine is a certain RT Kenneth Clarke QC.
They vote based on their political standpoint and also, most crucially, on who they want to lead the country. That one thing can often change their decision as they step up to the booth. It is a strategy that the Conservatives have played to the max – Theresa May v Jeremy Corbyn.
Their theory is that the floating voters, the ones that don’t really have their political colours nailed to the mast, will plump for the “stability” angle, the known factor. That is why they have hammered the “strong and stable” message. Even the suggestion that they are “strong and stable” conjures thoughts that the other parties can’t be. Therefore, they must be weak and unstable.
They’ve even gone so far as to make it a vote for Theresa May, rather than a vote for the party. This is almost a US Presidential Election campaign. Take a look at their election battle bus…it is all about the leader, not the party.
Contrast that with Labour. Here we have a man who divides the party, never-mind the voters. In some quarters, MPs have openly suggested that JC, just like Ed Miliband before him is the problem with the voters. So, they have tried to focus on the idea and possibility of change. His name is nowhere to be seen.
Pundits are already calling a Tory landslide, however, on the last day that new voters could register, a record 622,000 applications were sent to the government’s Individual Registration digital service, exceeding the previous record of 525,000 applications on a single day ahead of last year’s EU referendum vote.
Who are they? Who do they support? Have they been motivated by May or captured by Corbyn?
PR Week has been featuring a panel a of expert Public Affairs advisers throughout the campaign, they conclude overall, our panel has judged Labour to have run the best political campaign, with the Conservatives and SNP in joint second place, while the Lib Dems and UKIP trail in third and fourth place respectively. But will the party that ran the best campaign be the one in power tomorrow?
Or will the person?