Lessons from survey of elections May 2010

Produced by: Socitm Insight

Type: Reports

Lessons from survey of elections May 2010 reports on a series of surveys carried out by members of the Better connected team to assess the quality of online coverage of this years general and local elections held on 6 May 2010.

Forty-two council websites were involved in these surveys. They were selected for the sample because they were holding local elections on May 6 and were also subscribers to the Socitm Insight Website take-up service - giving Socitm access to data on actual usage of these websites during the election period.

The research follows Socitm Insight surveys into coverage of council elections in June 2009 (county and unitary councils), May 2006 (London councils) and May 2005 (counties).

This year's analysis of the council website election coverage was done in three 'rounds', timed to coincide with key dates in the election process:

• Round one (10 April) coincided with the deadline for people to register to vote, and to register for a postal vote in both the general and local elections
• Round two (4 May) was done two days prior to polling day and looked at how well councils were using digital channels to encourage people to vote
• Round three (7 May) was carried out when the local election results were being counted and published by most councils.

An additional survey was carried out on Saturday 8 May to test how well councils' election pages were performing in Google searches. Socitm also recorded use of social media by the sample councils and also collated stories and statistics supplied by councils nationwide.

In a separate but linked exercise, Socitm looked at how easy it was, starting with a Google query, for voters to discover which constituency (general election) or ward (local elections) they were in, and from there, who the candidates were, and more about them.

Last modified: 7th June 2010