Mudslinging and a lack of policies: Why the election campaign is putting voters off
Discontent is likely to reduce turnout on polling day amid ‘one of the most bitter’ election campaigns in memory
The Scottish election campaign has so far been defined by two things: mudslinging and a lack of policies.
Some of the accusations have seemed surreal - no more so than the episode which dominated this week.
Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar told journalists at the STUC conference in Dundee on Monday that Reform’s sole MSP Graeme Simpson had slagged off his party leaders to him.
Mr Simpson allegedly called Scottish leader Malcolm Offord a “loser” and Glasgow MSP candidate Thomas Kerr “a weasel”.
This started a whole spiral.
Mr Simpson denied the claims and said he was so annoyed that Mr Sarwar was no longer his “friend”.
He then weirdly said that Mr Kerr was more like a “lion”. On a visit to a pub the following day, Mr Kerr said his colleague had assured him that he had never called him a “weasel”.
This followed perhaps the most significant moment of the campaign so far, when Mr Offord reacted to being called a racist by Mr Sarwar on live TV by claiming the Scottish Labour leader had spoken to him about “working together to get rid of the SNP”.
Mr Sarwar obviously denied this and repeatedly called Mr Offord a “liar”.
The SNP tried to use this to their advantage, saying that it was evidence that Labour was doing a “grubby backroom deal” with Reform.
But this spat isn’t the first case of mudslinging we have seen in this campaign.
In fact, it has been going from the very start.
Labour made lots of noise after former SNP council leader Jordan Linden was convicted of ten offences including sexual assault.
The party then dubbed a Nationalist candidate a “sex pest apologist” and put out another release about a candidate who had been part of a Westminster sexual harassment probe.
The engagement from the public so far has been relatively low, while polling from earlier this week showed that voters are unhappy with the campaigns.
James Mitchell, politics professor at Strathclyde University, was particularly scathing of the election campaign so far.
He said: “I this has been one of the most, if not the most, bitter and unpleasant elections I can remember and my memory goes back to the 1970s.
“There are likely a number of reasons, each adding to the problem but difficult to tell relative weight of any.
“First, the backdrop is challenging and there are no easy answers. This induces frustrations and blame games.
“The pretence that there are easy answers only adds to the heat as anyone who dares point out that pronouncements and announcements without thought as to delivery is unhelpful, cynical and evasive is decried and abused.
“Social media clearly has not helped - the contrast between what we see in social media and what is often referred to as the mainstream media is stark.
“On the one hand frustrations with the refusal of the UK Government to consider conceding another referendum contributes to nationalist anger while nationalist opponents are angry at the constant demands for a referendum which they see as irrelevant to the crises we face and because another referendum is highly unlikely any time soon.”
Prof Mitchell said that the mudslinging is affecting voter trust - and may result in a lower turnout.
He said: “It has made for a poor example of the democratic process at work. It adds to public distaste for politics and politicians and to distrust. It likely helps fuel protest voting.
“It looks likely that this campaign will turn off many electors and thereby reduce turnout.”
He continued: “All parties need to offer hope and serious policies. Announcing policies that have no real prospect of being delivered creates false hopes that can only lead to more distrust. Greater honesty about the challenges ahead is absent.”
Realistic policies have been pretty absent throughout the campaign.
The most eye-catching promise is the SNP’s price cap on supermarket goods - something the Scottish Parliament does not have the power to implement.
Pollster Mark Diffley said there is “a disjoint” between what voters want the parties to be talking about and what they are actually discussing.
He said: “When you think about what all the polling tells us about what voters want politicians to be talking about, and then what they actually are talking about during this campaign, there appears to be quite a disjoint between detailed policy conversations, or at least some policy conversations around, particularly the cost of living and public services, which we don't really seem to be having, at least not at the forefront of the campaign.
“I think it speaks to a wider sort of voter discontent, really, which is driving down turnout.
“Voters feel quite disconnected at the moment. The things they want to be talking about are not really being talked about in the detail or with the with the kind of level of detail that they would want.”
He said that low turnout - which he predicts to be “probably in and around 50-55 per cent rather than the 63-64 per cent of last time” - will have the biggest impact on Labour.
He added that nothing is happening to encourage voters: “Are we having engaging leadership debates? Or engaging conversations? We’re not.
“All these things that we know will be factors in driving up turnout, don't really appear to exist in this campaign.
“You couple that with all the work that we and others have done on just how kind of scunnered people feel.
“How disconnected, how angry, anxious, all of those things. Then you get to an unsurprising conclusion that turnout looks like it's going to be to be lower.
“The parties themselves, I would argue, haven't particularly done very much to to address that during the during the campaign.”
He added: “Labour and Reform are just mudslinging and can't really seem to get out of that cycle that they're now in of just sort of tearing tearing bumps out of each other, and meanwhile, the voters are sort of shrugging their shoulders.”
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