US hero voters key to Harris win, say top ex-aides who plotted Labour UK victory

Deborah Mattinson, Starmer’s former pollster, is planning to fly to Washington, D. C. , this week to brief Harris’s campaign team about how Labour surprised everyone in the UK election by focusing on groups of “aspiring, upwardly mobile, working-class voters who are fed up. ” 
 
The visit will precede another trip by Starmer to Washington on Friday to meet Biden, his second since assuming the topmost office in the country. It will also be his first since Biden resigned and Harris emerged as the Democratic candidate. 
 
As the election for the White House remains a toss-up with just weeks to go before 3 November, when the United States of America goes to the polls to choose either Harris or Trump as their president-elect, Mattinson who left Starmer’s office after the British Premier contest, and the former director of policy, Claire Ainsley believed that the same strategy that worked for Labour can be useful in Harris emerging victorious on 5 November and beat Trump 
 
Mattinson and Ainsley write in the Observer that some of the issues that are important to these persuadable voters are going to be similar on the two continents. 
 
‘These voters – commonly the former Labour voters – had dumped the party in their perverted logic that the party had dumped them. ’ Former Tory voters who voted in the 2019 elections they represented nearly 20% of the total electorate. The listening by Labour to basic economic needs such as house and security needs brought the back. 
 
It was opined that like the Rust Belt communities, core issues such as housing, prices, jobs, lessening of debts and taxes would also appeal to the undecided middle-class voters of the United States. Labour went out with the intention of discovering as much as it could about these SMs and then using that knowledge across campaign domains. 
 
“They were patriotic, they were family oriented, they were struggling with the cost of living: alienated the working class voters who wanted a change of guard. 
 
Analyzing J. K. Mattinson’s book entitled ‘The Brexit Voters’ which he has recently published Mattinson introduced new term “hero voters” referring to the population that with a few exceptions voted Brexit and could be guided by political leaders if they felt the leaders were going to solve their basic existential needs’ issues. 
 
The pairing, they think, might turn the scale by providing votes in swing states of America in particular. 
 
Since the beginning of November’s presidential election, Harris has upside down a contest that appeared to be custom-made for Trump’s win. This is still undecided as a glance at the data backs this up as we can see clearly. We strongly envisage that the similar hero-voter approach could be of immense difference, just as it was done successfully here in the UK. 
 
“The starting point is to define and analyze Harris’s hero votes – all eligible voters who have thought about Trump, uncommitted voters, who reside in a mere few of the most competitive states. ” 
 
Mattinson and Ainsley were contacted by the Democratic think-tank the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) for which Ainsley has been working since his departure from Starmer’s office at the end of 2022. 
 
Most recently they have been actively conducting polls among the US voters and focus groups in an attempt to discern what will persuade the latter, and who do the former consider important. 
 
“While the context is different, the similarities are striking,” they say. ‘This group – who in the US would label themselves as middle class rather than working class as this group in the UK might do the same – is struggling. ’ 
 
“They firmly trust that the middle class is threatened, out of reach for people like them, deprived from the opportunity to own a house like their parents or grandparents did, unable to afford necessities and chronically conscious of the shockingly high prices of food, electricity, and other necessities and more often than not, holding down second jobs just to make ends meet. ” 
 
Among the people that the two former Starmer aides may meet during such a visit are Megan Jones, a senior political adviser to VP Harris, and Will Marshall, who founded the PPI and had business with the OGH’s top New Labour when the party was learning the secrets of Clinton Democrats in early-mid 1990s before the great July 1997 triumph. 
 
Mattinson and Ainsley claim to have had much more time to think over the tactics of their strategy than Harris’ campaign has. But they indicate that making some minor alterations to the demonstrated strategies could assist the Democratic party to continue with the current gains, and improve the party’s chances of winning the race. 
 
“Starting at the moment when we determined that our hero-voter is concerned, we have had three years to socialize the thinking through party activities. Team Harris has had less than three months. Compared to what the Harris team has done in the last couple of weeks, success now appears to be within the grasp of the Tory party and its hero-voter.