Blog

by Simon Plenderleith

Just to remind you all that the deadline for for registering to vote is at 5pm (Tuesday) tomorrow afternoon, so if you aren’t registered then head on over to About My Vote (the official Electoral Commission website). The mail deadline has now passed to get your registration form delivered in time by post, however you can print it off and drop it in at your local authority (as an unnamed member of our team had to do today!).

It doesn’t really need saying, but this is an incredibly important general election, and you shouldn’t miss out on having a say in the future of this country and it’s government.

We’ve got some exciting new things being released tomorrow, as well as the release of the eagerly anticipated manifesto policy updates. We’ll keep you updated on here, Twitter and Facebook.

by Matt Chocqueel-Mangan

The overwhelming positive coming from this election campaign is the wealth of resources around to help engage voters and help us make an informed decision. And the more the better, as far as we’re concerned! 

Given we all share a passion for a fairer democracy, how about sharing some tips here? Here are a few of good ones, but it’s over to you… 

My favourite is www.de-mob.co.uk. They have focused on the three main political parties, and the great thing is that they cover lots of issues that we haven’t, so if you want to plug those gaps this is a great place to start! And for all you fellow cyclists out there, our questions are answered courtesy of the Guardian here.

There are a couple of other ‘survey-based’ websites too, so if you want a second opinion head over to www.whoshouldyouvotefor.co.uk. Most of the media broadcasters are offering great resources around the ‘Digital Election’, and the BBC and Guardian are certainly worth bookmarking. Slightly left-field, the Open University are running a thought-provoking exercise with their 92 Rewind project, which is interesting to follow. 

So what about you? Where else do you go to research your political leanings? With something this important there’s no sense keeping it to yourself!

By Matt Chocqueel-Mangan

We were delighted to sail past the 250,000 mark today! This is entirely thanks to the incredible support from all of you out there who have shared, tweeted, forwarded, posted, blogged, dug (digged?), emailed and generally just shouted about the Vote for Policies website. Thank you all. Being able to compare policies, it seems, is something we find useful in deciding who to vote for. 

Also pleased to report that the site has never been busier, with over 25,000 surveys being completed today alone! This is also after some really frustrating technical issues over the weekend that we know inconvenienced many of you. Sincere apologies to all of you we haven’t managed to reply to yet - hings are back to normal, so if you have time to try the survey again please do. Thanks also for being so patient with us - it helped soothe the pain of getting no sleep and surviving on little more than bad jokes and Crunchy Nut Cornflakes.

We were also delighted to release a new feature (and the source of our weekend troubles) showing results for specific constituencies. We’re still adding the data from all of the surveys so far, so the full picture will be revealed tomorrow morning. Great to see people are already posting links to for their constituency results!

We’ll be posting here later today and will be keeping you abreast of developments post-election. In the meantime, I hope you’re all as excited about the election day as we are, and looking forward to whatever tomorrow (literally and figuratively) may bring.

Do remember to vote too (I say this mainly for the benefit of our Simon…).

Thanks all ;-)

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.