Suprise! Non-political Voters Aren't Political

When you are a conservative you want your conservative party to be conservative. You want it to stand for conservative ideas and policies.

There’s only one problem with that. Women. They tend not to vote on ideas, on parties, and on our side vs. their side. They vote for condidates because they like them. It’s enough to send a ideological party supporter crazy.

Just look at the polls on David Cameron, the young, new, non-ideological leader of the British Conservative Party. William Rees-Mogg takes a look at the numbers. Right now, a

YouGov poll published in The Daily Telegraph on Friday gave the Conservatives 38 per cent, Labour 31 and the Lib Dems 18.

But the party identification right now is 17 percent Conservative, 24 percent Labour. That means that the Conservatives right now are attracting the support of a ton of independents, but Labour is only attracting the support of a few beyond its base.

[Take this] opinion poll, taken by ICM and published in The Sunday Times [Sunday.] This shows that men would prefer Gordon Brown to David Cameron as prime minister by 42 to 36 per cent, but women would prefer Mr Cameron to Mr Brown by 40 to 34. This is in line with YouGov which shows a 2 per cent swing to the Conservatives since the last election among men, but a 6 per cent swing among women.

The numbers show that the Conservatives are leading among women and independents, both groups that do not vote the issues so much as their feelings about the candidates.

Now you can see why David Cameron has been concentrating on presenting himself to the voters as an appealing personality. The voters who are up for grabs are precisely the voters who are swayed by personality.

Mr Cameron is the non-party leader of his party: he identifies best with non-party voters, who are, paradoxically, the largest party.

Now it all makes sense. But if you believe in the power of ideas it is enough to make you crazy.