Sunday, December 2, 2007

The Online Election

A week ago the Australian Federal Election made political history. Of course, after 11 years, the result was a change of Government, with the Australian Labor Party winning from Opposition, and a sitting Prime Minister losing his seat for only the second time in history. All of this has been well documented.

What has not been so well documented is the role of IT – specifically the Web - in the election result.

The Australian Labor Party was delivered a big majority, by taking a huge share of the Gen Y vote. I don’t think it is any coincidence that the Labor Party had a dominant presence on the Web.

The Labor Party had a Campaign URL in kevin07.com.au which was easy to remember, if derivative of Obama08. The Labor site reflected current Web thinking – kept current and relevant with daily updates, offered effective use of video, contained blogs, and clear links to their major campaign messages. And, to integrate the site with other social networks, the home page offered prominent links to integrated messages on facebook and myspace, and to more video material on YouTube.

The people behind this deserve credit for highly effective use of the Web. They have changed Australian political campaigns forever.

1 comment:

lindyasimus said...

Being overseas during the election, I can say that it was fantastic to be able to follow the election and not miss out too much on what was happening. Now if we can just cast our votes online next...!