Digital Diva • Did online election campaigning really influence 40% of voters?

Did online election campaigning really influence 40% of voters?

The 2010 General Election was dubbed the UK’s first Digital Election with 56% of adults reading or seeing political information online during the campaign. Around 40% of the great British voting public said their voting intentions were influenced by online political campaigning.

Digital channels including Facebook, blogs and political websites had the greatest impact on traditionally apathetic young voters aged 18 to 24.

This was the finding of a recent survey of 2,300 people by YouGov.

Despite the hype around Twitter’s potential influence in the run up to the election and the creative tools (e.g. 10 Downing Tweets below) being produced to analyse election content within this channel, only 5% of UK voters claim to have read any political content on the site. Among voters aged 18 to 24, Facebook was far more influential, with 36% reading political information from the site compared with only 13% on Twitter.

While ‘online mums’ were courted by Cameron, Clegg and Brown on sites such as Mumsnet, blogs and forums were actually twice as popular among men (15%) compared to women (7%) as sources of political news and commentary.

Online video content was a focus for all the main political parties, however only 8% of the public watched political videos on site such YouTube during the General Election campaign, but this figure is significantly higher at 25% for 18-24 year olds.

Online advertising was also a prominent part of the online election campaign, with both Labour and the Conservatives investing in PPC and other online advertising campaigns on key sites. According to the research 12% of adults and 25% of 18-24 year olds recall seeing online political advertising during the election campaign. They obviously weren’t doing enough though…

Changing My Mind covers one person’s online journey through the election:

“I didn’t notice that many examples. From all the hot air generated about the power of social media I was expecting to be subjected to an Obama-style groundswell buffeting my sails. This failed to materialise. Online display was low on the horizon and search advertising was absent.”

Was email a missed opportunity? Email was a cornerstone of Barack Obama’s campaign, but only seems to have made minimal impact in this General Election. Just 13% of those surveyed can recall receiving any emails from political parties and organisations in the run up to May 6th.

So…from reading a few articles that contributed to this blog post, chatting to friends and my own experience, I’m surprised to see that people influenced by online was as high as 40%. I found that ‘traditional media’ and debates with friends actually influenced me far more than anything online did.

Do you all agree? Did you see anything that swayed you? …or did you just vote the same as ever?

prweek.com