Category Archives: Online politics

The Independent View: Put your questions to Mark Pack on the internet election

The 2010 general election will live long in the memory for a variety of reasons – the end of New Labour, a surprising Con-Lib coalition, the first TV debates – but one crucial aspect of the campaign that had politicians and commentators chattering with excitement was the entrance of a new political player – the internet.

Social networking and Web 2.0 opened the floor of the political debate to everyone, from satirical photoshoppers to cynical bloggers and, of course, let us not forget Twitter gossip worth its weight in retweets.

Whilst the political parties did their best to tackle new media during …

Also posted in Op-eds and The Independent View | Tagged and | 1 Comment

Welcome to the new bloggers…

Five blogs have recently joined Ryan’s Liberal Democrat Blogs aggregator:

Good luck to all the new bloggers, and why not take a moment to pop over to their blogs, take a read and post a comment?

Whether you are a new or experience blogger yourself, you may also find our compilation of “how to blog” posts useful:

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The Internet election?

Cross-posted from Liberal Democrat News:

“This will be the first real internet election,” was the oft-repeated claim made in the run up to 2010’s national poll. So how did that claim stack up against the reality?

Some will point to the hype surrounding the leaders’ debates as evidence that television remains the dominant force. Ten million tuned into ITV on 15 April, and ‘Cleggmania’ gripped the nation for the next fortnight. Meanwhile, the principal gaffe of the campaign – Gordon Brown’s ‘Bigotgate’ – was captured not by a citizen journalist, but was an old-fashioned ‘hot-mike’ incident caught by Sky News.

Does this …

Also posted in General Election and Op-eds | 6 Comments

Welcome to the new bloggers…

Seven blogs have recently joined Ryan’s Liberal Democrat Blogs aggregator, continuing the recent spurt in both new bloggers and new contributors to this site. There was a previous burst at the start of the election campaign with this second one following the election result. It’s a welcome sign which compliments the news of rising party membership every day since the election; people are more interested in the party and wanting to take part and discuss politics.

Here are the new additions to the aggregator:

Good luck to all the new bloggers, and why not take a moment to pop over to their blogs, take a read and post a comment?

Whether you are a new or experience blogger yourself, you may also find our compilation of “how to blog” posts useful:

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Welcome to the new bloggers…

Four blogs have recently joined Ryan’s Liberal Democrat Blogs aggregator:

Good luck to all the new bloggers, and why not take a moment to pop over to their blogs, take a read and post a comment?

Whether you are a new or experience blogger yourself, you may also find our compilation of “how to blog” posts useful:

Tagged | 2 Comments

It’s administrative blunders, not fraud, which should worry us most

The problems with electoral administration ranged far wider than those which caught the headlines. Perhaps the weirdest came in one polling station in Burnley where the caretaker was getting everyone turning up to vote to sign in and out of the building “for health and safety” reasons.

More seriously, there were queues of people left wanting to vote when the polls closed at 10pm last Thursday in Birmingham, Chester, Hackney, Islington, Leeds, Lewisham, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle, Sheffield and Weybridge. (If you were a voter caught up in these problems, the Electoral Commission wants to hear from you as part of …

Also posted in Election law and Op-eds | Tagged and | 10 Comments

Welcome to the new bloggers…

Two blogs have recently joined Ryan’s Liberal Democrat Blogs aggregator:

Good luck to the new bloggers, and why not take a moment to pop over to their blogs, take a read and post a comment?

Whether you are a new or experience blogger yourself, you may also find our compilation of “how to blog” posts useful:

Tagged | 3 Comments

Philippa Stroud: the disappearing Conservative candidate

This morning The Observer ran a piece detailing the less than savoury attitude towards homosexuality of Philippa Stroud, Conservative candidate for Sutton & Cheam and head of the influential Conservative think-tank Centre for Social Justice:

A high-flying prospective Conservative MP, credited with shaping many of the party’s social policies, founded a church that tried to “cure” homosexuals by driving out their “demons” through prayer…

Abi, a teenage girl with transsexual issues, was sent to the church by her parents, who were evangelical Christians. “Convinced I was demonically possessed, my parents made the decision to move to Bedford, because of this woman

Tagged , , , and | 195 Comments

Over £6,000 raised online for Evan Harris

Regular readers of  my posts about online politics will know my scepticism of the extent to which online fundraising can work in the UK on the same scale as it does in the US (e.g. because there’s a different attitude towards supporting causes by giving money rather than time in the US and because in the UK campaigns, courtesy of their parties, usual start with a significant donor lists rather than having to create ones from scratch).

However, what it certainly can do is to catch a moment of enthusiasm and to make it easy to do that which would otherwise …

Tagged , and | 2 Comments

YouTube publishes party leader video responses

Until earlier this week it would have seemed a good idea to use the day before the final party leaders’ debate to launch the leaders’ answers to YouTube’s Digital Debate questions. Gordon Brown, a live mike and the word “bigot” rather buried the whole story which is a shame as the questions and answers explore a range of issues beyond the well-trodden ground of most of the mainstream media coverage.

You can watch the answers over at http://www.youtube.com/ukelection – and in particular look out for Nick Clegg’s very strong answer on the Digital Economy Bill question.

Also posted in General Election | Tagged and | Leave a comment

How the reach of party campaigning is measuring up

A YouGov poll earlier this week asked people which, if any, of the parties had contacted them in the previous week (numbers in brackets from similar survey in mid-April):

Conservatives: 39% (31%)
Labour: 34% (25%)
Lib Dem: 29% (19%)

(Overall contact rates are also up on February, though the Brunel survey then wasn’t conducted in quite the same way.)

Amongst those contacted by each party, leafleting dominates with email is ahead of the phone:

Conservatives: 93% leafleted, 13% door stepped, 10% emailed, 3% phoned
Labour: 94% leafleted, 12% door stepped, 5% emailed, 5% phoned
Lib Dem: 94% leafleted, 13% door stepped, 8% emailed, 3% phoned

Also posted in General Election | 5 Comments

Getting people out to vote – with a little technological assistance

I wrote the following piece for the May edition of Total Politics:

The efforts made by Returning Officers and local council to encourage people to vote in the weeks running up to polling day are remarkably crude when viewed from a marketing or political campaigning point of view.

Send one, usually A5 sized black and white, text-heavy leaflet to everyone a few weeks before polling day, stick a few posters up in libraries and that is pretty much it.

There are some good reasons for this. Shortage of funds in one. Another is that raising turnout is rarely a politically neutral act …

2 Comments

Welcome to the new bloggers…

Three blogs have recently joined Ryan’s Liberal Democrat Blogs aggregator:

Good luck to all the new bloggers, and why not take a moment to pop over to their blogs, take a read and post a comment?

Whether you are a new or experience blogger yourself, you may also find our compilation of “how to blog” posts useful:

Tagged | 1 Comment

UK email newsletters rated

Jakob Nielsen, the usability experts’ usability expert, has an interesting post reviewing the election emails from the main parties. It’s a good piece – and you can read his own words here. Rather than repeat here all the good points he makes, here are some (small) caveats to it:

  • He writes, “It’s not enough to have a full privacy policy elsewhere on the site. Users need to be told the policy on the spot when you ask for sensitive info”, saying that having a link to a full privacy policy from the spot where you ask for sensitive information isn’t

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Welcome to the new bloggers…

Four blogs have recently joined Ryan’s Liberal Democrat Blogs aggregator:

Good luck to all the new bloggers, and why not take a moment to pop over to their blogs, take a read and post a comment?

Whether you are a new or experience blogger yourself, you may also find our compilation of “how to blog” posts useful:

Tagged | Leave a comment

Daily View: the virtual poster special

Posters matter in election campaigns, because they show people that a party has plenty of support. Knowing that a party has lots of support in turn encourages other people to vote for that party. So last Sunday’s Daily View was a poster special with one you can print off and put in your window.

Today it’s the turn of the virtual poster. Take this graphic – also at http://bit.ly/ldvirtual – and use it to as your Facebook profile picture / Twitter avatar etc. That way we can help turn the 49% who say they would vote Lib Dem

Also posted in Daily View | Tagged and | 2 Comments

The technological impact no-one was expecting

I’ve often written about my scepticism of excited comments about 2010 being the first internet general election both because they miss how much at the organisational level has already been altered by the internet over the last two general elections and also because people looking at the internet’s impact on the external side of politics spend far too much time looking at the national scene when instead they should be looking at the local scene.

After the first TV debate you could already imagine the election post mortems headlined, “First internet election? Or first TV election?” Old-fashioned TV has …

Also posted in News | Tagged and | 11 Comments

Lib Dems lead the digital way … on the Web, on Twitter and on Facebook

The jury might be out on whether the 2010 general election is living up to its billing as ‘The Internet Election’, but the verdict on the Lib Dems’ use of the web is a thumbs-up.

The party website

First up, www.libdems.org.uk. As today’s Guardian reports:

Fresh from being crowned king of TV following the first leaders’ debate on ITV1 last week, Nick Clegg can also polish his digital halo after a new report found that the Liberal Democrats have the most user-friendly website. It seems that Clegg, the self-styled people’s champion, presides over a website most fit for the people, according to

Also posted in General Election | Tagged , and | 4 Comments

Unofficial Lib Dem Facebook fan group exceeds 100,000 members

It’s less than a week since Lib Dem Voice brought you news of a fresh new unofficial Facebook fan group, We got Rage Against the Machine to #1, we can get the Lib Dems into office!

We noted then that the group was “almost as big” as the official Lib Dem Facebook group, having just reached the 13,000 members mark.

Since then LibDem2010.com (its official web address) has gone well and truly viral, and today it passed the 100,000 member mark. In fact it didn’t just pass it, it smashed it. As I type it stands at 102,759 members. By the time you read this it will be more, many more.

Also posted in General Election | Tagged | 7 Comments

Welcome to the new bloggers…

Four blogs have recently joined Ryan’s Liberal Democrat Blogs aggregator:

Good luck to all the new bloggers, and why not take a moment to pop over to their blogs, take a read and post a comment?

Whether you are a new or experience blogger yourself, you may also find our compilation of “how to blog” posts useful:

Tagged | Leave a comment

Social media’s impact on political reporting

At the weekend I did a session for the Radio Academy on social media, journalism and the general election.

Here it is as a podcast – so enjoy!

Also posted in News and Podcasts | Tagged and | Leave a comment

Vince Cable crossed with Sid Vicious and with a dash of Sinatra

The latest salvo from the InVinceCable We Trust campaign is Vince Cable’s Way…a, umm, ‘mild’ reworking of the crooners’ classic My Way. Though think more Sid Vicious than Sinatra…

Clearly the video’s a lighthearted way to make the serious point at the centre of the InVinceCable campaign: that Vince Cable is the only realistic candidate for chancellor with the credentials to do the job effectively.

We realise that this focus on one position in the next Government and one individual amongst all politicians isn’t one supported by all, but the potential for a hung parliament, in our view, …

Also posted in News and The Independent View | Tagged | 1 Comment

Lib Dem Linda aims to kick Nads out of Parliament

LDV readers may have already seen Lib Dem candidate Linda Jack‘s advertising campaign video aimed at raising funds to unseat controversial Tory MP Nadine Dorries in Mid-Bedfordshire. Launched today, Linda’s ad will appear on leading political blogs and web sites to raise funds, as well as those searching for Nadine Dorries on Google.

Also posted in General Election and YouTube | Tagged , and | 11 Comments

Over 13,000 raging against the election – and for the Lib Dems – on Facebook

‘We got Rage Against the Machine to #1, we can get the Lib Dems into office!’ is the name of the independent Facebook group set up just 2 weeks ago, and which currently numbers well over 13,000 fans. Which means (with impeccable liberalism) that this unofficial grassroots movement is already almost as big as almost as the official Lib Dem Facebook group.

As the group’s creators state:

This is NOT a bandwagon! This group is intended to encourage those who would like to vote Lib Dem, but usually don’t in favour of strategic voting, that if we unite we can really see a change in the 2 party system.

Also, the group wasn’t set up by lib dems, it was set up by Ben Stockman. He sent Jon Morter (creator of the RATM group) an email asking if he would mention the group. Jon Morter liked the idea… and that’s how it took off!!

Our reference to the Christmas RATM effort is simply a recognition of the way people can join together for a purpose (any purpose!) using a social networking site. However, it’s good to see that Rage oppose two-party politics also lol (See http://tinyurl.com/ye2f582)

Want to promote the group to your non-Lib Dem Facebook friends? Then spread the word, using http://libdem2010.com as the direct link, or Digg it here.

The Voice’s favourite quote from the group?

Also posted in General Election | Tagged | 10 Comments

Good news on turnout and engagement

Two pieces of cheery news.

First, from the latest Sunday Times/YouGov poll:

I am so disillusioned with politics that I am seriously thinking of not voting at all in the coming general election:

Agree 15%
Disagree 73%

All things considered, 15% is a pretty low figure.

Second, from a survey of 18-25 year olds:

A survey of 18-25 year-olds, commissioned by new media age and conducted by Lightspeed Research, found 46% of those aged between 18 and 21 believe increased political activity online has stimulated their interest in the election, with the figure at 41% for 22-25 year-olds…

Also posted in General Election and Polls | Tagged | 1 Comment

How are the party leaders doing on Twitter?

I’ve used Edelman’s Tweetlevel tool for my monthly round-ups of how Liberal Democrat MPs are doing on Twitter, so the figures just outabout how the party leaders are doing as measured by that tool caught my eye.

Some of the headline findings are:

  • Gordon Brown wins Twitter war by volume
  • Clegg is the leader with most favourability
  • Cameron “gets people’s goats” – exciting most negative Tweets, but Cameron’s negative ratings have decreased since the call of the General Election
  • Tory NI pledge gives Cameron significant uplift in favourability
  • Over 50,000 Tweets on the party leaders since 22nd March, with nearly half of that since General

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Welcome to the new bloggers…

Eight blogs have recently joined Ryan’s Liberal Democrat Blogs aggregator:

Good luck to all the new bloggers, and why not take a moment to pop over to their blogs, take a read and post a comment?

Whether you are a new or experience blogger yourself, you may also find our compilation of “how to blog” posts useful:

Tagged | 2 Comments

Online campaigning’s reach lags only modestly behind offline campaigning

A new survey about how many people have been reached by the online campaigning of political parties has been written up in the media as a bad news story, in more than one place, even though the data shows online campaigning reaching not that many fewer people than offline campaigning.

The Nesta survey (carried out 31 March – 9 April) found 21% of people saying they could recall emails, adverts or websites from the political parties. This compares with 27% of the electorate who say in the recent Brunel survey that they have been reached by the offline campaigning …

Tagged and | 1 Comment

Is this the next candidate to be axed for their online insults?

On Friday the new and traditional media were full of the tale of Stuart MacLennan, whose foul tirades led to his removal as the Labour parliamentary candidate for Moray. Amongst those leading the calls for his removal were the head on the Conservative’s press office, Henry Macrory and the Conservative Party leader David Cameron, who described the remarks as “pretty appalling“.

So you might wonder what the Conservative hierarchy might think of a candidate who posted this:

The blog

Also posted in News | Tagged , , , and | 27 Comments

Missteps on the online campaign trail

Although I’m an enthusiast for the possibilities for sensible use of the online world in political campaigning, it doesn’t always go right for people:

Also posted in General Election and News | Tagged , , , and | Leave a comment
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