April 22, 2010
Can the web push UK elections?
Until last Thursday, it appeared that UK's Conservative Party leader David Cameron was the strong favorite to win the upcoming UK elections...
... that are rife with frustration about Labour Party leaders who many believe have squandered their chance to lead. But in last week's debate, the first televised debate in UK history, something curious happened. After the debate ended, many people were reacting positively to Nick Clegg, leader of the perennial hangers-on Liberal Democratic party, and since then the race has seemed to burst wide open.
But why?
Well, in today's world of always on, instant, on-demand news, the impressions of the first televised debate in history were quickly distributed on the web, prompting what some reporters are referring to in headline-hungry Britain as "Cleggmania."
From the New York Times' blog, The Lede:
Just days after he was the third man of the British election campaign, Mr. Clegg now finds himself compared to Winston Churchill, Barack Obama, Princess Diana and even Jesus. The fact that some of those comparisons were made in jest by supporters of other candidates, in an attempt to pierce what the Conservative mayor of London, Boris Johnson, claims is “the biggest load of media-driven nonsense since the funeral of Diana,†is perhaps the most telling sign that support for the third party is now seen as a genuine threat, less than three weeks from election day.
The question that remains to be seen is, will Nick Clegg's (or anyone else's) breakout performance down the stretch before the May 6 election, and to what extent will the web play a role in influencing who takes over on Downing Street when voters go to the polls next month.
The jury's still out, but here's one item making the rounds after last week's debate:
Posted by Buzz Webster at 05:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
April 09, 2010
UK's Cameron fights to connect with voters online
An article from the latest issue of Wired Magazine looking at both UK parties work to connect with voters online in the run up to next month's UK elections.
James Crabtree, for Wired Magazine, takes a look at both British parties' efforts to learn from their own exploits online as well as take careful notes on successful American candidates' efforts to reach out to build a community of impassioned voters on the web.
From Wired Magazine:
One evening [Conservative web team manager Rishi Saha] ran into Sergey Brin at a party; they talked politics, and he played with Brin's demo Android phone. And it was at Google that he was to make his most important contact. In meetings to learn about forthcoming Google products, Saha found himself chatting about the election with a young engineer who mentioned in passing that he had been a longtime "precinct captain" for Obama's campaign, often using its social-networking platform My.BarackObama.com or MyBO. Saha asked for a demo.
He had played about with MyBO before but as he said later: "This guy talked me through in detail what worked, and what the problems were. They were probably the single most important 30 minutes in helping me understand what we needed to do next." Two Google staffers took him through the Obama and McCain campaigns' sophisticated paid-for search advertising strategies: Obama had been spending $1 million a month on Google search alone and developing increasingly sophisticated campaigns, defensively buying up terms used by opponents and reacting to news in real time, at the very second a story broke. Saha learned about Google's Moderator platform; he met teams at Yahoo and Facebook, and showed particular interest in Facebook's Connect system, a handy way of authenticating people for political sites based on their Facebook profiles.
Returning to the UK, Saha and his team set about building the final stage of their new campaigning toolkit. The team had run various online experiments and rebuilt their main site. The party's push to improve its email marketing had been integrated with the main site, using CheetahMail, also provided by Experian.
Yet beyond Merlin, the party had yet to do much for local candidates such as Charlie Elphicke. This was the gap MyConservatives was meant to fill. Built over nine months using Drupal by developers LBi, and led by Coates, it was launched at party conference to give local activists tools to help them organise events, raise money and access a virtual phone bank to call wavering voters. The site won enthusiastic internal reviews, not just from the usual digital boosters but also from the party's hardheaded press chief, Andy Coulson. It even had a sense of humour: the site's "404" error message features a smiling Eric Pickles, the Tories' bluff Yorkshire chairman, holding up a sign saying: "Sorry chum, we couldn't find your page." Saha's technology platform was complete.
In a sharp charcoal-grey suit jacket, Saha is onstage making a keynote speech to the Personal Democracy Forum, a gathering of political technology experts, in Barcelona's Torre Agbar tower. Huddled delegates have been talking over cups of coffee about the 2010 election. One notes that Saha's team asked people to donate their Facebook status to the Tories during the 2009 European elections, predicting similar polling-day stunts. Others talk of the coming "Google surge" of targeted last-minute online political ads, and mutter about the secretive arm's length hit squads all three parties have set up to push out damaging/amusing YouTube attacks. The consensus Most Radical Technology for Election 2010 is the camera phone: who, exactly, will be gotcha'd first?
Wired meets Joe Rospars, the streetwise former head of Obama's online operation. He questions whether the Tories really did learn the lesson of Obama's campaign: that what matters in politics is the mobilisation of real people. "For all their databases and search - engine tricks, you have to ask what is the quality of interaction most people will have with the Tories during your British election. If they're still only getting leaflets, or even emails, and not a knock on the door from a neighbour they know, then they are only halfway to getting what we did." Other knowledgeable observers who have spoken on condition of anonymity have voiced similar doubts.
A common theme is that Conservative efforts are impressive, but hugely expensive. As one put it: "When you spend half a million quid on a rubbish campaign to get people to be your friend on Facebook, as they did in 2008, you've got to expect more for your cash." Saha, though, remains upbeat. "The only way we will rebuild the trust that has been lost is by opening up access, giving the public more, and making them feel a part of the team, a part of what we are trying to do," he says towards the end of his speech. "Unlike some, I'm optimistic about this, and I think technology and new media are just integral to our ability to do this." He sits down to strong applause. In his eyes there is a steely confidence. OK, he seems to say to the audience. We have this election. We've built our machine. We like the look of it. Some of you think it's not going to work? Fine. Bring it on.
Posted by Buzz Webster at 10:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
April 01, 2010
Pols take to web on April Fools' Day
What good would April 1 be without a few quality April Fools' Day gags?
Though many have lamented the demise of April Fools' Day as the internet has made mass-marketing simple hoaxes easier than ever (April 1 or not), there were a few April Fools' gags on behalf of politicians and political groups that brought out a little laugh.
- The Sunlight Foundation, a government transparency advocacy group, unveiled a PDF-inspired homepage. (More on TechPresident on Sunlight's campaign against PDFs inside.)
- Former Iowa staff for John Kerry's 2004 presidential campaign are circulating a phony letter warning them that the campaign is under FBI investigation for allegedly rigging the '04 Iowa caucuses
- Google rolled out it's usual April Fools' Day gag by renaming itself "Topeka," playing off the news that the city of Topeka, Kansas, renamed itself "Google" while campaigning for Google's new fiber initiative.
- And not to be outdone, the National Republican Senate Committee published a new video poking fun at President Obama
Posted by Buzz Webster at 11:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
