Now the general election is done and dusted with Thirsk and Malton haven finally declared we can take a look and see how the Internet played its part in the outcome. I should say from the outset that I am a Conservative and chuffed that we now have a Conservative prime minister after kicking out a tired discredited Labour party.
Many billed this general election as the digital election with both Facebook and Twitter expected to highlight and maybe even dictate the mood of the election. Twitter in particular did play its part – Twitterdom was alight on each of the Leaders’ Debates and other events such as the Gillian Duffy saga. However rather than set the tone it followed it in my opinion.
The real player in this election was the TV – for the first time in the UK we had live televised leaders’ debates and the whole election period was dominated by these. Even the newspapers, all except one or two, supporting the Conservative Party seemed to be insignificant in “helping” people in deciding how to vote.
Back in the online world I did personally find that most on Twitter were either supporting the Lib Dems or Labour. That may just be the people I follow or it maybe because your average Conservative voter tends to be older than that of the other two parties and probably uses social media less often.
Of course we had to put up with the usual tricks from the “left”. Namely telling everyone and genuinely believing that robbing from the rich to give to the poor gives them the moral high ground. This after 13 years of a Labour government when the gap between the rich and the poor has widened. I particularly liked an article in the Telegraph that stated the Green Party’s economic policies were so far left they were almost far right.
I am just happy we got the right result – I would have preferred an outright Conservative majority but I am a liberal Conservative so am happy to work with our new Liberal Democrat friends.