Archive for james crabtree
Political campaigning is being shaped by the unseen technologies
Taking part in one of the panels at the excellent Parties, People and Elections: Political Communication since 1900 conference a few weeks ago, I heard Nottingham’s Phil Cowley once again push his “Cowley’s Law of Campaigning” (not to be confused with Cowley’s Syndrome). Phil’s a charming man and he insisted he would keep on mentioning the law until his mother [...]
What you see isn’t what you get with online politics
Grey. And wanting to pay homage to Barack Obama. That’s the rather odd impression left from taking a flick through the websites of the Republican contenders to be their party’s 2012 presidential candidate. Grey is the colour of the season, at least on the web. That is an odd choice, you might think, given how [...]
Birds of a feather: how the Liberal Democrat Parliamentary Party shapes up
The June/July edition of Parliamentary Brief ran this piece looking at the state of the Liberal Democrat Parliamentary Party: With the party’s unity under the spotlight of the media and in the gunsights of the Labour party, now is a good time to look at the underlying unity of the Liberal Democrats. Over the last five [...]
More doubts raised over Conservative Merlin campaign database
James Crabtree’s excellent recent piece for Wired about the Conservative Party’s use of technology and new media raised some questions over the party’s Merline database: If each constituency has roughly 50,000 voters, even a superhuman (and wealthy) candidate can hope to reach about only half of them. This is where Merlin — the party’s little-publicised [...]
