Resource of the Week: Politicsresources.Net - British General Election, 2010
Resource of the Week: Politicsresources.Net - British General Election, 2010
By Adrian Janes, DocuTicker Contributing Editor
A British General Election will take place on May 6th. For a gateway to many of the key sources of information, the General Election page of Politicsresources.net is very hard to beat. The site also includes some original content , as in this page about the party leaders’ TV debates (the first ever in Britain).
There are five main sections:
Parties, candidates and the election
Polls, predictions, statistics and tactical voting
Hung Parliament
Newspaper and TV General Election sites
Other election sites and information
In a situation where partisan views are prevalent, Politicsresources.net provides a useful corrective by trying to offer direct links to all of the political spectrum. The Parties section exemplifies this, with an enormous list of links for both national and local party websites and manifestos, allowing them to speak for themselves. Bear in mind that some organisations listed are not parties as such, but as interest groups are politically active in some measure. But this, too, has the virtue of increasing a truer awareness of the range of views on the political scene, beyond the standard “three major parties” scenario that dominates most political discussion in Britain. (If, however, you only want to examine registered political parties, a link is given to the official Electoral Commission list.)
Sites on a particular aspect of the election are also usefully included in this section. For example, many parliamentary constituencies have had their boundaries altered since the 2005 General Election; they are listed here. The Times provides an analysis of seats considered likely to be affected by one of the big issues of the past year, the abuse of the MPs’ expenses system.
The day-by-day fluctuations of views are reflected in the Polls section, the polls themselves being drawn from various sources (which are, of course, inclined to give their own slant to any poll results). Some interactive maps -- e.g.,from the Daily Telegraph -- are also given here, providing a brief description of the circumstances, electoral history and prospects of a constituency.
The very existence of this site is testimony to the part the Internet now plays in shaping politics and how we gather information about public affairs. But in the past five years since the last General Election, there has also been the explosion in blogging and social networking -- incorporated here through such sites as Tweetelection (based on general voter sentiment) and Tweetminster (based on tweets from candidates and others considered politically influential). Many other sites, even if not explicitly based around something like Twitter, include invitations to network and share.
Another way in which the Internet effect is revealed is by searches and, as the search engine of choice for the majority in Britain, Google’s UK Election search trends is potentially highly significant, showing spikes and declines in interest in major figures, parties and issues, with a zoom facility to manipulate the period covered between a day and a year.
The third section of the site is given over to explaining the concept of a ‘hung’ parliament (PDF), where no party has an overall majority, and examining its implications. Many polls were already suggesting that voter sentiment is such that this may well occur, and the effect of the TV debates has been to accentuate this. Some sites listed here are actually agitating for that outcome.
The fourth section draws together the coverage from some of the traditional media (e.g., the BBC, the Guardian and Reuters). This further illustrates the overall convenience of the site -- what remain as the chief sources of current news for most people are provided as well as the blogs and social networking opportunities.
‘Other election sites and information’ appears to be essentially a miscellaneous category, often blogs of some sort. But it also includes such sites as The Straight Choice, reproducing scans of local political leaflets with a postcode search facility; the UK National Debt Clock; the Mumsnet General Election page, offering its members’ perspectives; and party iPhone apps:
It’s certainly an absorbing and sometimes surprising selection.
To gain a really comprehensive picture of the British General Election -- its issues, the range of party policies and voters’ views -- would take a lot of reading of many sources. Politicsresources.net does an immense service in making this task that bit more achievable, by its channeling of the daily news and the variety of ideas being expressed.
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