TwittelectionTwitter in the

General Electionhttp://twittelection.co.uk

Dave Cross@davorg

@twittelection

Twittelection

● What?● Why?● How?● What happened?● Was it worth it?

What?

TwittElection● Twitter account

– @TwittElection● Twitter lists

– One per constituency● Web site

– twittelection.co.uk– Page per constituency– Stats

Why?

I ♥ Elections

I ♥ Twitter

Elections + Twitter =

Awesome

How?

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

What Happened?

Basically,it worked

A few bugs

Interesting error codes

403 & 429

108

Adding non-existent user to

a list

Typo inTwitter name

ChangedTwitter name

106

The user has blocked you

@glenntingle

@glenntingle(UKIP Norwich North)

See also@timscottukip

Some people don't understand

crowd-sourcing

Statistics

72%

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?

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