Mark Pack

The Daily Mail website was running an online poll with the very Daily Mail question, “Should the NHS allow gipsies to jump the queue?”

In what looks like a striking display of social media’s power, lots of messages sprung up on Twitter urging people to vote in the poll. A quick search I did on Twitter for tweets featuring the bit.ly short URL used found over 1,500 tweets, with numerous comments along the lines of ‘annoy the Daily Mail – vote for the answer they don’t want’.

No great surprise then that at one point the poll was registering 94% saying “yes”.

Shortly afterwards, the poll disappeared from the Mail’s website, although the site does have comments highlighting its disappearance.

There looks to be one other after effect on the Mail’s site: the poll asking whether we should give up more powers to the EU is currently running at 64% saying yes. Somehow I suspect that a goodly number of people who came to the site to vote in the NHS poll decided to tweak the Mail’s nose a little bit more.

UPDATE: Email also played a role, as reported by Journalism.co.uk.