THE Conservatives virtually abandoned attempts to attract votes from young professionals at the last election, concentrating instead on crime and immigration campaigns to capture core voters.

The first breakdown of party spending during election campaigns has revealed a huge discrepancy over who the Conservatives attempted to target.

The advertising budget for the party came to approximately £8 million of the £17.8 million total, with more than half of this going on unsolicited mail shots to floating voters.

Invoices reveal that the party spent £1.5 million on immigration leaflets and £523,000 on crime, with a further £7,000 on targeting UK Independence Party supporters. The “Are you thinking what we are thinking?” campaign, which led to claims of racism, cost £120,000.

While Labour fought the election on the public services, the Tories’ combined spending on health and education was £1.5 million.

This suggests that the Tories gave up on attracting voters in the centre ground. This was reinforced last night when it emerged that they spent £380,000 on a mailshot for pensioners, but a sixth of this — £49,000 — on targeting “urban young professionals”.

Much of this was the work of their Australian election guru Lynton Crosby, who earned £441,000 in the campaign. He was blamed for the Tories’ negative campaigning. One of the biggest mailshots was an apparent appeal for money, marked “postal vote / financial appeal”, which cost £1.2 million.

Labour’s campaign involved attracting upmarket film production companies to produce party political broadcasts. The party spent £131,600 on six broadcasts.

Labour employed the Picture Production Company to buy “AOL Spots”, spending £9,000 on advertising space on the online service. The party also spent £2,000 to use six Press Association photographs on its website, all of which were more easily available.

The Tories invested heavily in data from a Californian company, Cause-America Branding in Brea, to provide them with a million e-mail addresses in marginal constituencies.

Some donors to the Tory party may be unhappy that their funds were used to pay for a libel action against a Labour MP. The party had to come up with £40,000 after Martin Salter, the Reading West Labour MP, successfully sued Liam Fox, then Tory chairman, over remarks regarding his behaviour towards journalists.

• An ICM poll for today’s Guardian puts the Tories on 34 per cent, Labour on 32 per cent, and the Lib Dems on 24 per cent.

LITTLE LUXURIES

Michael Howard’s make-up during the election by Carolyne Martini cost £3,638.35

Alastair Campbell billed Labour for £47,000 for four months’ work

Charles Kennedy charged £4,800 for six bespoke suits and £355 for six shirts

Producing 5,000 hand flags for the Tories cost the party £1,715.50

Tony Blair billed the Labour Party £53.46 for his car to take him to Buckingham Palace to call the election. The bill included two hours’ waiting time

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