Blog

by Simon Plenderleith

Thanks to all our vocal and passionate users, we’ve had over 100,000 surveys completed since we launched just over three weeks ago. We’ve been thrilled to hear all of your feedback, and it’s been fantastic watching the site grow and spark political debates across the world (we’ve picked up quite a foreign following from the USA, and even places as far afield as New Zealand!).

Matt has been ploughing his way through the freshly released manifestos so that we can update the survey to reflect current party policies. We should hopefully have this painstaking, but essential process completed by early next week. If we have it up sooner we’ll be sure to let you all know.

This past week or so, we’ve had major challenges keeping everything up and running to serve the hundreds of thousands of visitors to the site. We can only apologise if you’ve had problems completing the survey - we appreciate how frustrating it can be - but the good news is that we have now massively upgraded our capacity. We should have all the juice we need to help make this the most transparent election in history!

We’ve got some really exciting new features in development for the site at the moment. Some will help you spread Vote for Policies far and wide, others will help empower you and fellow voters in your constituency. We’re also working on some fascinating infographics that will provide a more detailed insight into the results that the surveys are producing.

We’re excited about what the next three weeks in the run up to the election will bring. Stay tuned, and don’t forget, vote for policies, not personalities!

by Simon Plenderleith

Well it’s been a bumpy ride at times, but without a doubt, it’s been a thrilling six weeks or so since we launched Vote for Policies on Monday 22nd March. Since then we’ve had over half a million visitors and over 2.25 million page views, from people in 185 countries around the world. Most importantly however, you wonderful people have completed over a quarter of a million surveys!

(See the delicious charts at the bottom of this post for the overall picture when the polls closed last Thursday)

We cannot thank you all enough for your support. It has been humbling to read your messages of encouragement and thanks, as well as seeing you spread Vote for Policies far and wide. You’ve proven unequivocally that word of mouth from passionate people is still the best way to spread a message.

Amongst the madness of building the site and keeping it up and running through huge traffic surges, we saw hundreds of blog posts and forum threads about Vote for Policies, thousands of tweets and a whole ton of sharing on Facebook. Eventually the mainstream media picked up on us, and all of this helped propel us to our busiest day on Wednesday 5th May (the day before the election), when 26,542 new surveys were completed. Each day has been a new adventure, and we’re incredibly delighted that you all came along for the ride!

Here’s some link action to the media coverage that we’ve had for Vote for Policies. If you saw something on TV, heard something on the radio or read something in the press about us, please let us know in the comments below. Thanks!

• ‘Online dating with the political parties’ - Financial Times
• ‘Vote 2010: slaps, spoofs and skulduggery’ - Channel 4 News
• ‘Election website roundup’ - The Guardian
• ‘General Election 2010: Find out how your vote will count’ - The Telegraph
• ‘Don’t put your leaders on the stage’ - Financial Times (in printed paper too)
• ‘Election 2010: Link-swap - which websites are you using?’ - BBC News
• ‘The Green party: a manifesto for a low-key life’ - The Guardian
• ‘Are you a secret Green party sympathiser?’ - Financial Times
• ‘Greens winning on policy, oddly’ - The Times
• Interview with Matt on Future Radio (http://www.futureradio.co.uk/)
• Interview with Matt on BBC Radio Coventry & Warwickshire (http://news.bbc.co.uk/local/coventry/hi/tv_and_radio/)
• ‘The Andrew Marr Show’ - BBC1
• ‘The Big Questions’ - BBC1

The results when the polls closed on election night

For the stats fans amongst you, here’s how the results looked at 10pm on Thursday 6th when the polls closed. We’re hoping to release more juicy stats and infographics soon.