ELECTION DIARY: The SDLP is seeking to reacapture "lazy" voters, writes Gerry Moriarty Northern Editor.
In the Assembly elections two years ago the SDLP fought its campaign with considerable high-tech fanfare and razzmatazz. It's employing a different strategy this time: GOTV - Get Out The Vote.
A pretty basic concept, for sure, GOTV is an American acronym; one which Sinn Féiners have used very successfully, but which the SDLP sometimes loses sight of.
In order to get out the vote the SDLP needs campaigners to join Mark Durkan in Foyle; Eddie McGrady in South Down, and Dominic Bradley in Newry and Armagh, as well as in the other Westminster and local election tussles. It needs spark.
In every election in recent years Sinn Féin candidates pound the housing estates with energetic canvassers; the SDLP goes out on the hoof with willing but small active service units. Mark Durkan and his team say that will change now. They've said that before but this time they say they're serious. Why? "Because we've had the complacency knocked out of us," to quote one of the strategists. And that's due to all the damage Sinn Féin inflicted on the once high-flyers of nationalism.
If party leader Durkan can't hold Foyle, where he is challenged by formidable Sinn Féin opponent Mitchel McLaughlin, then the SDLP is facing meltdown. It would be even worse if Eddie McGrady is defeated by Sinn Féin's Caitríona Ruane in South Down. But McGrady has worked his constituency well since he took it from Enoch Powell in 1987; he won't concede it easily to Ruane.
Dominic Bradley has the killer task of holding Séamus Mallon's old seat in Newry and Armagh against Conor Murphy of Sinn Féin. The odds are stacked against him. SDLP people talk up his chances but sotto voce they admit, "It's Murphy's to lose".
There is an outside chance the DUP and Ulster Unionists could so split the unionist vote in South Belfast that it would allow SDLP candidate Dr Alasdair McDonnell to creep up on the rails and win by the shortest of heads.
But the real crucible this time for the SDLP is Foyle. Which is why Durkan will be avoiding too many visits away from his base. He will be stomping the streets of Derry City and its environs, sometimes with his predecessor, John Hume, accompanying him.
A positive IRA response during the course of this campaign to Gerry Adams's call for the organisation to go away could, of course, lend the advantage to Sinn Féin in Foyle, and possibly in South Down. Adams has said a response is unlikely during the election.
The SDLP is also banking on regaining some lost votes. In the 2001 Westminster election it took 170,000 votes. In the Assembly poll in 2003 it won 118,000. So where are those missing 50,000 votes? Some went to Sinn Féin the last time but most can be accounted for by SDLP people failing to register or just staying at home. The party has beefed up the register but there is no guarantee it can recapture the "lazy" vote.
Durkan is also playing to the line that growing nationalist antipathy - particularly from the middle classes - to republican criminality and deviousness will work in his favour. "We're telling voters that a vote for us will also be an incentive for the Provos to clean up their act," as one senior activist explained.
Two important linked questions will be answered after polling day on May 5th: whether the SDLP truly can work the GOTV formula and whether a significant number of nationalists will punish Sinn Féin for the actions of the IRA by again buttering up to the SDLP. Yes, is the answer Mark Durkan badly needs to both questions.