A truly 21st century election

Following Barack Obama's victory in the US Presidential elections in 2008, everyone is looking at political parties in the UK to see if they can replicate Obama's success in online campaigning.

Obama managed to bring online campaigning to the local level, meaning people felt politics was personal to them and therefore were more willing to campaign and make small donations. It is these donations that are the most important part of the strategy, as Obama raised millions of dollars through millions of tiny donations; going against the normal practice of gathering large donations from big-name backers.

Unfortunately the Hansard Society believes the next British election will still not be a truly online election as in the US. Whilst it agrees that the internet has become an integral tool for all political parties, it has said that because of the structure of the British elections and the huge difference in the amount of money being raised in the UK it will not be the same.

But then many people may argue to the contrary considering the sheer amount of e-government technology surrounding British elections nowadays.

All three major parties have their own official websites and then each one has one or two independent websites that invite like-minded individuals to come and debate the issues that matter to them and spread the message.

The parties are also taking advantage of the internet for clever campaigning tactics. The Liberal Democrats have launched a website called labservative.com which mocks the both the Conservatives and the Labour Party for offering very little change. There is even a mock video address from a hybrid of Gordon Brown and David Cameron - Gorvid Camerown. The Conservatives have also become a fan of using targeted keywords to pull more people to their webpage. For major political events, they have been known to purchase sponsored link space on keywords related to it, for the Budget for example.

However, moving away from the parties' efforts, another key change in the last US election was the amount of debate engaged online. In this case the UK can boast a rather powerful and popular blogosphere that will certainly be debating every aspect of the general election.

British citizens can read the top political bloggers like Guido Fawkes, Dizzy, Iain Dale and the newspaper offerings to the average local citizen offering his/her opinion on the issues that matter most to that local community. The UK's blogosphere appears to be quite strong and debate has raged for some years about the surprising level of influence some of these sites can enjoy.

So whilst the election may not be a truly internet election, there is certainly a great level of effort by the parties and therefore a lot of information for you to get at if you really want to.