A very natty election database hit the desk this week.
It has all the candidates with their address, phone numbers, party, seat and so on.
The database, from Capital Monitor, will enable analysts and lobbyists to target candidates more easily. Thus you can extract all ALP women contesting seats needing a greater than 5 per cent swing.
A lobbyist could extract all major-party candidates in marginals.
Having extracted them, the program allows a mail merge and a standard form letter with the relevant data filled in. For example:
“”Dear Mr Bloggs
We sympathise with your difficult task of getting the 4 per cent swing needed to wrest the seat of Smithfield from the ALP.
The XYZ Society wishes you every success in this task. Should you win the seat we hope you will look favourably at the Heavy Subsidy and Bounty (XZY) Bill 1996.
Signed J Jones, Chief Grovellor, XYZ Society.”
Or words to that effect.
The database comes in IBM readable files on one disk and can be cut into all the standard programs. It costs $180 from Capital Monitor. Phone 2734899.