Social Media-savvy Labour Favourites To Retain Leadership With Online Crowds, Liberal Democrats Second, Tories Third

A TweetMinster poll conducted through Twitter with around 1000 respondents has placed Labour at 35%, Conservatives at 20% and the Liberal Democrats at 27% amongst users of the popular social media service. The poll also indicated a balance between Gordon Brown and David Cameron, with the majority of respondents though preferring “someone else” as Prime Minister. The findings were in line with the level of activity of the major parties, Members of Parliament and prospective candidates on Twitter.

London 22 April 2009 - A poll conducted between April 14th and April 17th 2009 by TweetMinster, www.tweetminster.co.uk, the service that allows people to follow and interact with Members of Parliament through Twitter, has indicated that should the election be held tomorrow, amongst web-savvy users of Twitter, the popular social media site, 35% of users would vote Labour, 27% Liberal Democrats and 20% Conservative. 8% indicated that they would vote for one of the other parties, 8% were undecided and 2% would not vote.

27% of those polled, indicated that independently of party affiliation they would prefer Gordon Brown as Prime Minister, 23% indicated David Cameron, 16% Nick Clegg and 34% would prefer someone else.

The majority of those polled (78%) said that the party has greater influence than the person in choosing whom to vote for, while 53% indicated that a politician's use of social media does not influence their voting intentions. 962 people participated in the poll.

According to TweetMinster the topline findings of the poll were:

Labour polled more or less in line with recent "official" figures. The slightly higher figure possibly due to the fact that Labour politicians are very active on Twitter;

The Liberal Democrats and the "others" polled higher, possibly reflective of recent “post-smear emails” trends highlighted by the latest polls, and of the fact they are highly active on sites like Twitter

The Conservatives polled considerably lower, which is possibly reflective of the fact that Conservative politicians and voters are less active on site likes Twitter than their Labour and Liberal Democrat Counterparts (of the 51 MPs on Twitter, 16% are Conservative, compared to Labour's 57% and the Liberal Democrat's 25%. Grant Shapps is the only Tory MP in the 10 most active MPs that tweet).

David Cameron polled relatively better than his party, which coincidentally is also reflected in TweetMinster's search trends, in which Cameron tends to be “more popular” and to receive more mentions within conversations than the Conservative party.

In general the results are in-line with the major parties level of activity and engagement on Twitter - the parties with more active politicians polled better. It is interesting that the majority of those polled indicated that they would want someone other than the current party leaders as Prime Minister, and at the same time indicated that the party, and not the party has a greater influence in their voting preference.

Alberto Nardelli, Co-founder of TweetMinster said:

"While this poll doesn't aim to be official or scientific, but is intended as an experiment born out of curiosity, the results are rather interesting; especially how they reflect the level of activity and engagement of the various parties, members of parliament and prospective candidates on Twitter. As the use of social media inevitably grows amongst voters, it will be interesting to see their influence and impact on future polls and voting behaviour."

http://www.tweetminster.co.uk On Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/tweetminster