Whatever happened to election posters in windows?

I remember a time when, at this stage in an election campaign, people would proudly wear their political allegiance

The original Tory election poster featuring Alex Salmond and Ed Miliband (Conservative Party/PA) (Conservative Party/PA)

I drove from central London to Oxfordshire the other day, through the densely populated suburbs of the capital, and then out west, via the M40, past the rolling hills of the Chilterns and then on to Oxford, and its well-appointed satellite villages and towns. How many election posters in people’s windows or front gardens do you think I saw in the course of this 60-mile journey? The answer, believe it or not, is one. On the outskirts of Woodstock, in the shadow of Blenheim, is a huge banner declaring support for the constituency Conservative MP, who also happens to be the Prime Minister.

I remember a time when, at this stage in an election campaign, people would proudly wear their political allegiance. “This house votes Labour”, or whatever, the placard would say, and we’re not afraid to admit it. The streets were full of them, and I remember going around my locality as a young man counting them – my own, very crude version of an opinion poll.

In most parts of the UK, you simply couldn’t do that today.

There are some areas, of course, where the old rules of engagement pertain: I was talking to someone close to George Osborne’s campaign the other day, and while she agreed with my overall observation, she said that in the south-west, these expressions of political support are as ubiquitous as ever.

So what happened? What’s caused the general disappearance of these posters? The simplistic response would be that people are just not that interested in politics any longer, but I believe the answer to be a little more nuanced and complex than that. For a start, this practice runs counter to the traditional idea that one’s politics is, like questions of morality and religion, strictly a personal matter, symbolised by the secrecy of the polling booth. And I have always wondered what exactly was the purpose of putting a notice in your window declaring your support. It was hardly likely to sway other voters: “Look, the people in No. 38 are voting Lib Dem, so we better had, too.”

There’s another, more deep-rooted, change. The triangulation of politics in the Blair years took a lot of the tribal loyalty out of voters’ preferences. The concepts of true blue and dyed-in-the-wool red became far less pronounced as the major parties congregated in the middle ground. Five years of coalition government has only solidified that point. Many people just don’t feel that sense of attachment to a political party that they once did, so they’re hardly likely to plaster their house with posters.

And it’s not as if we’ve suddenly become more bashful about our politics. Have a look at Facebook, and it seems that every timeline is full of political memes or posts generated by political parties and which have been promulgated by individuals. I am 96 per cent Conservative, or 92 per cent Labour, proclaim Facebook-users who have taken an online test. So, in the age of the confessional, I think we can be sure that privacy hasn’t killed the political poster. Perhaps the cause is both profound and obvious: it’s because a lot of people, myself included, haven’t decided who to vote for yet.