Informative political sites
For the third of my reports for the Daily Politics, I've been looking at some web initiatives aimed at giving voters more information about the candidates, the parties and their policies - and giving them a chance to put the party leaders on the spot.
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So here are the sites that we've featured:
is a project which aims to get election leaflets from across the country online. So far over 1,300 leaflets have been uploaded, including . The Straight Choice could be an invaluable resource for anyone seeking to identify either gaffes or departures from the party line.
asks a series of questions to ascertain your views about some key issues, from prison-building through immigration to the economy. It then tells you which party is closest to your views - those who vote tribally rather than on policies may be surprised at the results.
The video site is inviting all the candidates to sum up their manifesto in a video message. So far 300 have done so - that leaves a few thousand who need to get their skates on.
One initiative which does seem to have plenty of welly behind it is the Digital Debate launched by and . They've invited voters to send in questions - preferably by video - which will be put to Messrs Brown, Cameron and Clegg. Facebook and YouTube users get a vote on which questions should be put to the leaders. Already 500 questions have been submitted, with more than 20,000 people voting on them. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Digital Economy Act, passed in the final hours of Parliament last week, is a popular subject.
And of course I would be remiss if I didn't mention .
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Comment number 1.
At 12th Apr 2010, CComment wrote:Perhaps the most interesting guage of the effect of the internet on the general election will be the figures showing how many people download the parties' manifestos.
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Comment number 2.
At 12th Apr 2010, jaygavin wrote:I absoloutely agree that this will be a digitally fought election.
This youtube viral is a great example of social media being used to try and encourage young people to take up an interest in the election.
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Comment number 3.
At 12th Apr 2010, BluesBerry wrote:I LIKE 鈥漇TRAIGHT Choice鈥. It seems to have no bias, just a keen desire to make election leaflets (ALL election leaflets) available across the country.
As for Labour's controversial mail-out re Conservative cancer policies, this leaflet was allegedly sent to about 250,000 women across England. It was not in isolation. These leaflets were part of a range of campaign literature sent to addresses in England over the past month on issues such as health, crime and education.
Though at first glance, it might seem that these leaflets were targeting female cancer patients, this was not so.
If the mail-out was 鈥渟ick鈥, the sickness existed only within David Cameron鈥檚 head.
The Leaflet said that Tories would scrap a Labour guarantee on how quickly patients would see a cancer specialist. Is this true? Maybe David should answer this question instead of spreading allegations.
Some recipients may have had cancer (likely so in 250,000 mail-outs), but these people were not singled out. The wrongness here lies with David Cameron who has implied that Labour targeted cancer sufferers. Why would he say such a thing? Surely he has better things to talk about (or not).
Currently, there exists a Labour guarantee for those suspected of breast cancer to see a specialist within 2 weeks of being referred by a GP. So, David, is this guarantee consistent with Conservative policy, or will the Tories scrap a Labour guarantee on how quickly patients would see a cancer specialist?
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Comment number 4.
At 12th Apr 2010, suewinterbottom wrote:'Vote Match' was fun to do but there is something weird going on there - is the site sponsored by the Lib Dems? When you get your results and click on each party listed to see in more detail how the policies fit your views the Lib Dems seem to have been able to add little boxes of additional explanation and justification of their policies. These 'Additional Party Comment' boxes don't appear when you compare your results with Labour or Conservative policies, giving the impression the Lib Dems are being favoured in some way. Strange.
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Comment number 5.
At 12th Apr 2010, The_Hess wrote:This is all very nice but for any party to beat the current party in my constituency there needs to be a 17% swing. This is never going to happen in one election. To be fair, my constituency is one of the few where the winning candidate actually had more than 50% of the votes so perhaps it is a fair result. We still need electoral reform in time for the next election, although to be fair I think all the parties have become virtual clones of each other, with just a few subtle and irrelevant differences.
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