79% of Britons cannot recall any online electioneering

Politicians are failing to take advantage of new media’s huge potential to engage voters with 79% of Britons unable to recall any online electioneering, a survey by the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts found earlier this month.

And this was supposed to be the new-media election – yet TV appears to be stealing the show. The debate on ITV on April 15th was watched by 9.4m Britons – 37% of the prime-time audience – and led to a ten-point swing to the Liberal Democrats.

E-mail, blogging, social networking and tweeting have all had some impact – but arguably nothing comparable to this. As the political debate rages on, a report in The Economist this week describes the televised debates between Nick Clegg, Gordon Brown and David Cameron as “a triumph for old media.”

The Economist also reports that Get Elected, a political-research outfit, has examined 100 tight races, where online campaigning should presumably be fierce. It found that only 45% of the candidates in those races had Twitter accounts.

The televised debates are being dissected and discussed within new media channels just as they are analysed within the pages of newspapers and in homes up and down the country. We may already be dab hands with traditional media but this election has served to underline the fact that there’s still a lot to learn about how best to leverage the power of newer, online channels. A few years from now, things are likely to look very different. Like politicans, brands which learn how to use all available channels to their best advantage have a lot to gain.