London Mayor election online - web strategy and internet developments

The London Mayor election was the first UK election where the internet had significant influence. I have written about various aspects of the online campaigns previously and thought I would summarise some of the key developments here.

Boris Johnson had the most developed online campaign. Much has been made of his election strategist, Lynton Crosby, employing a “doughnut strategy” of ruthlessly targeting Tory-leaning voters on the edge of the capital (see here for more), but below are 5 examples of online activity in the London Mayor election which are also notable:

1) London Mayor election - online hustings and questioning

Whilst there were a number of official broadcast debates, various online initiatives sought to question the candidates and engage them in a more intimate environment. YouTube was less influential than it has been in the US elections, but the principle of users posting questions online for candidates to respond to was seen in a number of places - from live webchats with the Sun (where Boris suggested he would re-look at the smoking ban) through to more structured online hustings seen on sites like Yoosk.

Yoosk London Mayor online forum (click for larger image)

2) YouGov's London Mayor election online polls proved to be more accurate than the traditional polling methods

The London Mayor election saw controversy around polls and polling methods with YouGov and IPSOS / MORI having a public debate about methodology and Ken Livingstone's campaign making an official complaint about the YouGov polls - SkyNews covered this here.

YouGov conducted six polls (using their online panels) and always showed Boris Johnson with a lead - ranging from 6% to 12%. This went against some of the other more traditional, telephone based polling of rival companies which showed a much smaller lead for Boris and at one point showed Ken Livingstone ahead by 4 points. The final YouGov poll published on Thursday morning (voting day) exactly predicted the actual result with Boris winning by 53-47%. This has prompted a press release entitled 'YouGov [online poll] gets it exactly right in Mayoral election' and offers to 'help the inquest into inaccurate telephone polls.' (full release can be seen on the Adam Boulton blog).

3) London Mayor candidates use of online media

All candidates used online extensively and social media was prominent. We saw London Mayor candidates using Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, YouTube and blogs. London Mayor candidates (with the exception of Boris) also had Google strategies (see here) and well developed campaign websites. (3 days after the election Ken Livingstone's 'Vote Ken' Google campaign is still running though...........)

The online activity supporting Boris Johnson was the most well thought out and I thought the emails sent on Wednesday and Thursday were a nice touch (even if they did get marked as 'spam' by my Gmail.)

Boris Johnson email with links to his profiles on Twitter, YouTube and Facebook
(click for larger image)

4) The LondonElects website was a great success

http://www.londonelects.org.uk/ was set up to encourage voter turn out and to provide a central, neutral, online focus point for the London Mayor election. From running an initiative to find (and part fund) an independent candidate through to offering consolidated results analysis once the election had finished, Londonelects.org.uk gained over 1 million visits and contributed to record voter turnout.

LondonElects website homepage (click for larger image)

5) London Mayor election Buzz tracking

A number of companies have tried to show case their products by applying Buzz Tracking to the London Mayor race. Systems like 'Opinion Tracker' or QDOS kept track of online buzz around the candidates and published their results. Other traffic analysis companies like Hitwise also published insight on respective candidates web traffic.

It was also possible to gain insightful information from sites like Google Trends that show you the volume of people searching for a particular candidates name:

Google Trends analysis of volume of searches for each candidate (click for larger image)

My first post about the London Mayor election predicted that it would see a new style on online campaigning in the UK
(http://www.nickburcher.com/2008/03/london-mayor-election-will-see-new.html) and I think the London Mayor candidates' online campaigns were comprehensive. I don't think it is any coincidence that the most well developed internet campaign belonged to Boris Johnson, the winning candidate.

In future UK elections I expect to see online activity further developed with increased use of behavioural targeting and opportunities such as Facebook messages targeted to users in line with their political preferences. The London Mayor campaign was a testing ground for a number of online strategies and I think the internet will be a major battleground in the next UK general election.

London Mayor elections online campaign analysis - Boris Johnson is leading on the internet

The London Mayor election is in the final week of internet campaigning. Online is playing an increasingly important role in the election strategy and there have been some interesting initiatives and developments, however the majority of prominent web trends tools still show Boris Johnson leading.

Using Yahoo! Site Explorer it is possible to examine candidates sites and see how many other sites are linking to them (this gives insight into popularity and also indicates campaign reach):

Yahoo! Site Explorer analysis of www.backboris.com - 773 pages on the site and 62,913 other sites linking to it (click for larger image)

Yahoo! Site Explorer analysis of www.kenlivingstone.com - 242 pages on the site and 14,733 other sites linking to it (click for larger image)

Yahoo! Site Explorer analysis of www.brianpaddick.org - 377 pages on the site and 20,277 other sites linking to it (click for larger image)

When analysed in this way Boris Johnson and the www.backboris.com site are the clear leaders (though when compared to www.barackobama.com's 894,000 inlinks, there may be room for further growth!)

Another measurement tool, Google Trends, is showing that London Mayor election web searches continue to increase and Boris Johnson remains the most searched for candidate:

Volumes of Google Searches for each candidate (click for larger image)

London Elects, Ken Livingstone and Brian Paddick continue to advertise with Google, seem to have increased budgets and are now making use of the Google Content Network (where ads appear on Google affiliated publisher sites as well as on Google when people search.) This appeared on my blog this morning:

Google Ads from London Elects, Ken Livingstone and Brian Paddick on my blog (click for larger image)

Boris Johnson and the Back Boris campaign are (strangely) still not using Google for advertising and even though it has not featured in their campaign to date, I am surprised that they are not making use of Search as the campaign enters its last week.

Hitwise have analysed actual internet traffic to campaign websites and have a reached a conclusion in line with the Google Trends data - Boris Johnson is receiving significantly more web traffic than the other candidates:

However not everyone agrees with the conclusion that Boris is leading online. A new system of internet reputation measurement, QDOS, combs the internet and produces a QDOS ranking that is a combination of 'Popularity, Impact, Activity and Individuality.' QDOS rates Ken Livingstone as significantly more popular than Boris Johnson online:

However the QDOS system is still in Beta (and therefore not 100% reliable yet) and when you analyse the Boris Johnson score it has a strange anomaly where he lost about a third of his ranking on one day last week?

The polls are saying that the race for London Mayor is too close to call, but online data suggests that Boris Johnson is significantly ahead of Ken Livingstone and Brian Paddick. It will therefore be very interesting to see how the online popularity of Boris Johnson translates into votes. (It will also be interesting to see if Boris finally embraces Google this week!)

FOOTNOTE:

I have previously written about:

- Online campaigning in the London Mayor Election here
- London Mayor candidates web strategy for Web 2.0 here
- London Mayor candidates Google strategy here

London mayor election will see a new style of British political campaigning online

The power of crowds has been evident with a number of collaborative initiatives that have brought together likeminded online users. For example 30,000 people paid for a stake in www.myfootballclub.com which led to the group purchase of Ebbsfleet United football club and www.tribewanted.com created a combination of online community and real world sustainable tourism project on the Fijian island of Vorovoro.

To date the UK political establishment have not tapped into this trend though. In 'Politics, Policy and the Internet' (a recent publication for the Centre For Policy Studies) Telegraph journalist, Robert Colville, argues that British political parties have failed to embrace the new opportunities online (see here where you can download the pdf of his full study). Indeed the British National Party website has the same market share as all of the other UK major parties combined. He argues that the major UK political parties could reverse this by altering their mindset from “send” to “receive”, by learning the lessons of unofficial organisations such as bloggers, activists and campaign groups which have exploited the potential of the internet.

Whilst there are political blogs and sites like Webcameron, no party has truly engaged online communities in policy development. Downing St e-petitions have seen specific groups mobilised around particular issues (1 million people against roadpricing), but the UK has not seen anything similar to Estonia's 'today I decide' initiative that offered the Estonian public the chance to influence national policy and feedback on proposed new laws.

In the US Presidential elections Ron Paul and Barack Obama particularly have shown how effective the internet can be as a vehicle for raising funds and engaging supporters. Ron Paul is an interesting case because his campaign has used the internet to generate support far exceeding the original predictions for his campaign. The US electoral system means that he was always going to struggle against the more established candidates and campaign machines, however his online strategy has set the bar for online campaigning (see my previous post here: http://www.nickburcher.com/2008/02/no-other-presidential-candidate-can.html). Ron Paul and Barack Obama's online tactics could be particularly effective in a democracy with a more focussed electoral timeframe (weeks rather than months / years) and some of these strategies could be well suited to the forthcoming election for London's mayor.

The London mayoral election is the first really significant British election in a Web 2.0 world and over the next few weeks London is set to see some online political campaigning that has not been previously seen in the UK. Whilst things like Ken Livingstone's Search campaign are already running, the really interesting moves are around some of the independent candidates.

The socially progressive website www.londonelectsyou.co.uk is offering to award £50,000 to the campaign of an independent candidate. This will be awarded to the winner of a sort of online primary that www.londonelectsyou.co.uk are running, with the candidate gaining the most online votes by 18 March qualifying for the financial support.

Time Out magazine have entered their own independent candidate (Michael Hodges) into this competition and have flagged it, under the strapline of 'Vote Hodges', on the front cover of their magazine this week.

Michael Hodges is offering readers the chance to participate in the collaborative production of his London manifesto. More details can be found here: http://www.helphodges2008.com

Using public domain, online voter suggestions and feedback to influence an election manifesto is a clever idea and I'm sure the main UK political parties will start seriously investigating this sort of model for testing their own policy ideas. It is also a useful mechanism for bringing MPs closer to their constituents.

Alternatively if the UK political parties do not adopt practices of this nature, it may not be long before www.mypoliticalparty.co.uk actually becomes a reality?

FOOTNOTE:

I have also written about the Google strategies of the respective candidates here: http://www.nickburcher.com/2008/04/are-london-mayor-candidates-making-most.html