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Hung Parliament, Liberal Democrat

Why Social Media May Decide the Outcome of the Election After All

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Today the leadership, MPs and Federal Executive of the Liberal Democrat party are meeting to decide in which direction the party will leap, if indeed they opt for either.  Today’s discussions will decide who will be Prime Minister and which party or parties will form the government.   These are closed meeting but the social web is play a really significant part in the debate.

Yesterday Mark Pack, joint editor of Liberal Democrat Voice used the blog platform to open out the debate “On Saturday afternoon the party’s Federal Executive is meeting to discuss how the party should handle the Parliamentary situation… in order to ensure that people have a chance to send in a view that will be read before the meeting, we’ve agreed with the Party President Ros Scott a special email address which can be used to email in your views.”

There has been ardent discussion on twitter with the hashtag #DontDoItNick trending and a Facebook group has been created which the administrators claim is being monitored by the party hierarchy.  Currently it has 14,000 members and is growing at a rate of over 1000 an hour.  A Flashmob organised mainly via social networks has appeared outside of the Liberal Democrat HQ.  At the same time Sara Scarlett – Director of Development at Liberal Vision has been gauging support for a Con/Lib agreement. This could in the end turn out to be the social media election that many predicted.

Conservative, Hung Parliament, Labour, Liberal Democrat

Why a Coalition Would be Smart for Either Labour or The Conservatives

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The combined Conservative and Labour share of the vote fell to less that two-thirds of the total ballots cast for the first time since 1918, the election that followed the great war.  That’s important because the two main parties have dominated politics for generations but their stranglehold is slipping and has been gradually eroded in successive elections since the middle of the last century.   In this election is was around 65.3%.  What that means is that even under the first past the post system hung parliaments are increasingly likely.

In order to form a majority administration Labour or Tory parties in the future will have to include the LibDems.  Wouldn’t it make sense to get in first and build the foundations of future coalitions.

Conservative, Hung Parliament

Online Outcry at The Sun Front Page

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Share photos on twitter with Twitpic
By now you will have seen the extraordinary front page of  The Sun.  This image appeared as a twitpic reply within an hour or so.  We’ve posted it a little after midnight and it is currently getting more than 1000 views a minute.  It is not beyond the bounds of imagination that it could get more views than the Sun’s front page by close of voting.  Click the image to register your view.

Conservative, General, Hung Parliament, Labour, Liberal Democrat

Popular Hashtags in the 2010 UK General Election Campaign #GE2010

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This general election has been the first in which Hastags have played a part, they are used in social networks and most commonly in twitter, as user-generated meta data.  Put simply they are a way of identifying and therefore following tweets that cover the election or an aspect of it .  Here is a quick guide to some of the most popular ones

#GE2010  –  This is the default tag for posts that relate to the 2010 general election.  There are others but this has emerged as the most popular because it is economical in its use of characters.

#GE10  –  A shorter form, but less used than the above.  Useful if you have run out of characters but likely to be seen by fewer people.

#Vote  –  Has been used both as a short generic hashtag for the election but was also popular in encouraging voters to register before the deadline.

#UKElection  –  More instantly recognisable than #GE2010 but not quite as popular because it eats up more characters.

#LeadersDebate –  One of the most interesting because it was part of a phenomenon that TV programme makers call “two-screen”, using a laptop or smart phone to comment on live television.  It mean that social networks rather than conventional media were the first to pass judgement on the performance of the part leaders during the TV debates.

#iagreewithnick –  Echoing Gordon Brown’s famous utterance during the first TV debate and used primarily to show support for the LibDem leader during the bounce his party received after the first debate.

#NickCleggsFault  – Widely employed to mock the print media’s ‘assassination’ attempts on Clegg.  It was a meme that lasted a few days as Clegg was accused of all manner of spoofed wrongdoings.

#paxo   – Similar to the #LeadersDebate but employed for the Paxman leader interviews.

#LibDemFlashMob  – The hashtag used to organise the Liberal Democrat gatherings in Trafalgar Square and other UK cities on Bank Holiday Monday.

#InVinceCable  – Used by a group of digital marketeers and PR people, and their fellow travellers, to promote Vince Cable as Chancellor in the event of a hung or balanced parliament.  (FD  Election10 endorses the objectives of the #InVinceCable campaign).

#Labourdoorstep – Used by Labour candidates and activists to emphasise the fact that they were taking the campaign directly to the voters.

I’m going to venture another one that might become popular in the next few days. #Hung10 anyone?

Conservative, General, Labour, Liberal Democrat

Labour and Conservative Decline Traces Back Over Half a Century

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This morning I posted about the decline in the overall share of the two “major” parties and how this pointed to a certain hung parliament.

The post attracted a lot of traffic and several comments not least from one Ben Goldacre, journalist, doctor and author of the Bad Science blog.  I used ICM/Guardian data and plotted a graph showing the decline in votes over the last 20 years for the two major parties. He accused me of bullshitting and repeatedly called me a twat because I had omitted data from 1984-1990 that was available from the Guardian.  In fact the reason for starting from 1990 was because 20 years seemed like a good length of time to support the argument and there was a blip in the early eighties caused by the split of the SDP from Labour and their alliance with the Liberals.  I ought to point out that I wasn’t entirely blameless in the exchange in that I suggested he’d had a drink or two. Sorry Ben.

I am now posting using election data from the last 50 years and the latest poll data for 2010.  I think the picture is pretty clear and undistorted and supports the earlier hypothesis.  The combined support for the two main parties has been falling for 50 years.  If that continues and there is no proof that it will then two-party politics is on the way out.  The defining moment might just be on Thursday.

Conservative, Labour, Liberal Democrat, TV Debate

‘Hung’ Parliament Guaranteed by Labour and Conservative Decline

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The TV debates aren’t responsible for the Hung Parliament that will follow Thursday’s election as surely as night follows day.  A quarter of a century of decline in the combined Labour and Conservative share of the vote means that the two party stranglehold over UK politics is on its way out and Clegg’s TV performance was just a tipping point.

One of the wonderful things about the web is the accessibility of data.  The Guardian has published all of the Guardian/ICM polling data since 1984. At Election 10 we took the combined Labour and Conservative share for every poll and created the graph above.  In 1990 the two parties were claiming almost 90% of the vote between them this has shrunk to a little over 60% and it has been a steady consistent decline.   A continuation of this would mean a government taking power that was opposed by around 65% of the population.  Even our bizarre electoral system can’t sustain this.

To predict the future we must delve into the past.  In this case the past is telling us that the party is very nearly over for the reds and blues and the voters will be calling time this Thursday.

Conservative, Labour, Liberal Democrat

How the 2010 Election Gap has Narrowed in Red, Blue and Gold

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There’s a brilliant web site, independently run by YouGov political analyst Anthony Wells, called the UK Polling Report.  Along with lots of other election data is brings together all the opinion polls every day.  It also has data going back to the last election.  There is perhaps no better representation of what has happened in the last couple of weeks than this graph taken from the site.  Between 2005 and 2008 the Labour and Conservative shares were much of a muchness, whilst the last two years saw unbroken Tory dominance, albeit with a steady narrowing of the gap since last summer. Then wham bam thank you mam the three parties collided after the first TV debate and that look very much like where we’ll be in just over a week’s time.

Conservative

Is Tory Spin Doctor Henry Macrory Telling the Whole Story?

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Henry Macrory the Head of Press at the Conservative Party posted a tweet today with a link to the picture (above) of Jack Straw talking to an empty square in Wolverhampton this week.  He had uploaded the picture himself and it appears today on the Conservative Home blog stating – No one is listening to Labour, John Prescott couldn’t attract a crowd last week and Jack Straw has the same problem this week.  But the scene below was caught on video by the local Express and Star newspaper and shows Straw wrapping up his soapbox address to a fair size crowd.

It seems the new generation of political spinners are adept at using the web to twist a tale, but the web is getting adept at catching them out.