The web election. The digital election. The new media election. The Facebook election. The Mumsnet election. The email election. The Twitter election. The YouTube election. The first online election campaign.
From September to May, it was impossible to escape the notion that somehow – though no one could quite tell you exactly how or why – the internet was going to play a significant role in this campaign. And why wouldn’t it? Tens of millions of people in the UK use social networks to connect with peers every day – far, far more than read the tabloids – and politics is in large part about reaching out to people in the spaces they already inhabit.
Contrary to popular mythology, Labour actually understood this truism – and executed its core principles – much more effectively than the Tories or LibDems. Douglas Alexander’s ‘word of mouth’ strategy encouraged Labour activists to organise online in order to mobilise offline, and while Labour may not have won the air campaign of slick poster messaging and set piece events, it dominated the ground war of door-knocking and telephoning voters.
That activism was enabled in large part by Victoria Street’s online work. Targeted, issues-based emails spoke to progressives, not necessarily connected to the party, about what was at stake. Five thousand doorstep sessions were arranged by Labour activists using the party’s online tool, Membersnet, during the course of the short campaign alone. The party’s iPhone app and online phone bank enabled real world activism on an unprecedented scale. The result was that 500,000 voters were reached in the last weeks of the campaign – and 100,000 contacts were made every day in the final week before 6 May.
And on the periphery, Labour activists – inspired by the sense that this was their movement and they could help shape its most important election for a generation – responded in kind. Progress’ own David vs Goliath grassroots campaign raised the money to furnish marginal seat CLPs with tens of thousands of leaflets. Don’t Judge My Family showed real families – with real, heart-rending stories – to tell of how David Cameron’s marriage tax proposals would discriminate against them. Hope not Hate harnessed Blue State Digital technology to unleash a ground campaign that decimated the BNP in East London. Unions Together members shared harrowed memories of the last Tory government. And when Gordon Brown gave the most impassioned speech of the campaign at CitizensUK just days before the election, Labour’s online army launched into action – spreading the word with pride and ensuring the YouTube clip was seen 50,000 times in those final hours before polls opened.
The full effect of those initiatives and those impressive numbers is, of course, difficult to measure. But it’s telling that the Labour vote held strong in many of the marginal seats feared lost just a few months ago.
None of this is to say that this was in fact the internet election, the digital election or any of the other platitudes that seeped into 2010’s electoral diction. Much of that hyperbole was thrust upon the narrative by a media seeking a sub-story – a story of old-style spin rooms populated by new-style bloggers and tweeters. Yes, even in the TV debates, the web played a role: the print press’ post-match analysis was informed at least in part by the instant views of online campaigners and polls. But those papers – and the TV debates they covered – took the discussions out of the Westminster village and into the heartlands. While the web shaped the process, it was never – and was never going to be – decisive.
Labour’s web capacity is not perfect. But it is already helping to write the next chapter of our party’s history. In the week after 6 May, 10,000 new members joined the party online. That energy, that determination, that movement building will be crucial in the coming years. Because it’s not impossible that 2015 will be the first web election.