UK poised for a truly digital election

Hazel Rycroft 

THE forthcoming UK election is going to be like no other. The Obama campaign showed the power of social media, a medium that barely existed at the last election, the digital age has dawned. Britain sit up and take notice!

The election has now been called for the 6th of May, announcing the start of four weeks of intense marketing by each of the political parties. 

All the political parties will be looking to imitate the Obama campaign, because it was so successful, especially in relation to social media. In February 2008 John McCain raised $11m for his US presidential bid, while Obama in the same month raised $55m by using just social media.

In July alone, Obama’s fundraising doubled that of McCain’s, generating $51 million. In addition, the Obama camp has cited that 88 per cent of their donations have come from their online resources.

In the UK we have already seen the adaptation of posters on www.mydavidcameron.com, which have been the centre of media attention thus far. But the parties will soon start to heat up on the social media sites. The site www.tweetminister.co.uk has started tracking Tweets about the parties, acting like a social media canvassing tool.

The parties are currently neck and neck in the Obama clone race. The Conservative’s slogan, ‘vote for change’ has been taken directly from Obama. Labour have similarly taken the ‘yes we can’ moto and decided to get to know the voters.

In social media stakes Obama is the king and currently has 8,011,962 fans on Facebook, compared to the 19,852 fans of David Cameron and the 5,088 fans of Gordon Brown. He has 3,579,202 followers on Twitter and is on a total of 16 social networking sites.

YouTube was also very successful for Obama, although it relinquished the control over the campaign; the videos were empowering and proved to be incredibly useful in creating the viral grassroots effect that swept the American nation. The viral campaigning now begins in Britain, the election could be won and lost on how many ‘friends’ the candidates have on Facebook!

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