A thought I’ve been bouncing around in the last few days is how the 2010 UK elections will play out through social media. Not only from a national perspective, but from a local campaigning perspective.

A number of blog posts have pointed to the fact that the two main parties have not yet managed to generate much positive user generated content online or truly harness the power of social media to build networks. There have been many reports that unofficial blogs are ranking highly in Google search results for terms like ‘David Cameron’ or ‘Gordon Brown’. I can vouch for this fact, as a friend’s rather excellent ‘unofficial site’ was ranking highly in Google search results for ‘David Cameron’ a few weeks ago. However within a day or two it suddenly dropped down in the rankings (bah!).

But at a local campaigning level there is still a huge disparity between those councillors who blog and tweet and those who don’t. Just recently I did a quick audit of the number of blogging county councillors in Cambridgeshire and found 17 blogs out of a possible 69 county council members, just under 25%. Now I may have missed a few, but those who do blog and tweet will definitely have the edge if they can communicate well online and use it to their party’s advantage, with the potential to reach a far wider group of constituents and potential voters.

It will also be interesting to see how the main parties deal with hyperlocal bloggers. How will they respond to stories at a local level that could potentially have a significant impact on the party’s reputation at a national level?

One thing is for sure, the 2010 election will bring the use of social media in UK politics into sharp focus. There will be lots to learn about how national and local politicians adapt to using social media and how voters are influenced by social media.

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