The Conservatives are running two voter databases, neither of which are fully functioning, in their key constituencies, Coffee House has learned.
The party had been trying to get rid of its frail database Merlin, which keeps breaking during by-elections and at other crucial moments, in time for the General Election. But it hasn’t quite managed it yet, and is instead running Merlin alongside a new, but not fully-tested, database called VoteSource.
Candidates in target seats say VoteSource is currently working for them, but that it is lacking some of the functions it was supposed to have by this point and they do not know how it will cope with big changes in data. They are running their data on both Merlin and VoteSource in case one breaks. One constituency campaign team is considering reverting to keeping its data on a card system in case both break.
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