Nick Clegg has been voted the winner of last night’s leadership debate, according to an online poll of Facebook users. An exit poll launched within minutes of the debate ending showed that the Liberal Democrat leader was the most successful candidate, polling 48% of the vote, followed by David Cameron 27% and or Gordon Brown […]
Nick Clegg has been voted the winner of last night’s leadership debate, according to an online poll of Facebook users.
An exit poll launched within minutes of the debate ending showed that the Liberal Democrat leader was the most successful candidate, polling 48% of the vote, followed by David Cameron 27% and or Gordon Brown on 25%. Facebook said over 20,000 users of its social network took part in the poll.
23/04/2010
Over 2000 people also logged on to Facebook’s ‘Rate the Debate’ application to mark the leaders’ performances during the debate.
Results from the dial test pinpoint the highs and lows of the debate between the three candidates for prime minister.
- Public favourite Clegg impressed Facebook users most during his opening
statement, whilst Cameron’s was the worst; - The three biggest peaks of positive reaction were all for Brown, when he
spoke about climate change, the pope and pensions; - The low point of the debate was when all three leaders were debating faith
in politics and the possibility of coalition government; - Clegg’s low point was when he spoke about tackling terrorism;
- Cameron’s low point was when he talked about immigration.
Richard Allan, Director of European Public Policy at Facebook commented: “It’s clear that the TV debates are an historic moment, but with 76 rules of engagement and broadcasters banned from showing the audience reaction, it’s online where voters can express their opinion. Our dial test gave the power of opinion back to the public allowing them to say exactly if they liked what they are hearing in real time.”
Throughout the debate Facebook users were able to log on to www.sky.com and www.itv.com to use Facebook’s Live Stream device to broadcast updates alongside the live online streaming of the debate on broadcaster’s websites.
The dial test allowed Facebook users to able to log on to Facebook’s Democracy UK page were they were able to use a dial on the screen to indicate how strongly they agreed or disagreed with what they are hearing, using buttons underneath to move the dial up or down.
The sentiments of all participating Facebook users were then aggregated in a real time online graph.
The dial test pinpointed which bits of the debate hit the spot and which missed their target by charting the peaks and troughs of national sentiment as the debate progressed. The peaks show where the UK is united in agreement.
Facebook said the troughs show when the nation is ‘collectively throwing its remote controls at the TV in frustration’.
All the results from the dial-test are available for download as a spreadsheet from a dedicated page, located at http://apps.facebook.com/dialtest/export.php.
The dial test is hosted on Democracy UK, Facebook’s general election page which enables Facebook’s 23 million UK users to debate the key political issues facing the nation.
Source: www.facebook.com
