TwittelectionTwitter in the
General Electionhttp://twittelection.co.uk
Dave Cross@davorg
@twittelection
Twittelection
● What?● Why?● How?● What happened?● Was it worth it?
TwittElection● Twitter account
– @TwittElection● Twitter lists
– One per constituency● Web site
– twittelection.co.uk– Page per constituency– Stats
Elections + Twitter =
Awesome
How?
● Technology– Pretty easy
● Data– Much harder
Technology
● Twitter– Lists & Widgets– Recent changes
● Perl– Net::Twitter
● Github pages
Technology
● Bootstrap● jQuery● Modernizr● Initializr
Data
● Much harder problem● 650 constituencies● ~6 candidates per constituency● ~4000 candidates● No centralised data source
YourNextMP
● Crowd-sourced list of candidates● Party affiliation● Twitter username● And an API
Technology + Data
● YMNP API● JSON● Basic data munging● Twitter List API● TwittElection
Basically,it worked
Interesting error codes
Adding non-existent user to
a list
Typo inTwitter name
ChangedTwitter name
The user has blocked you
@glenntingle(UKIP Norwich North)
See also@timscottukip
Some people don't understand
crowd-sourcing
Candidates By Party
Party Twitter No Twitter
Conservative 84% 16%
Labour 93% 7%
Lib Dem 70% 30%
UKIP 51% 49%
Green 77% 23%
SNP 100% 0%
Plaid Cymru 83% 17%
Was It Worth It?
● Small number of users– Lack of marketing
● No stats on Twitter lists● People said nice things
Next Steps
● Make it configurable● Promote code● http://github.com/davorg/twittelection● Re-use in other elections
– UK & International● Twitter + PopIt
Questions?
@davorg@twittelection