Sniping away on Twitter

Congratulations must go to Tweetminster for ploughing through some 831,349 (gulp) tweets by UK politicians between 1 January 2009 and 15 January 2010.

The website has released a report looking at how politicians at all levels in the UK use Twitter.

They show the Labour party has more followers (113,201) than both the Conservatives (36,874) and the Liberal Democrats (32,202) combined.

Here are some key findings:

• Labour MPs and PPCs are more active, more frequently mentioned (i.e. have greater reach) and have more followers than the two other main parties combined.
• Nick Clegg and Eric Pickles are typical of how senior party members can play a critical role in connecting with members of the public
• The Conservatives not only have significantly greater reach than the other main parties, their posts tend to have greater distribution (i.e. mentions and retweets) than established media and key bloggers.
• The Conservatives are more effective at distributing their message from the top, yet less so at a grassroots level in terms of spreading these positions within conversations.
• Labour has the opposite challenge - members drive conversations, yet the official line doesn’t strategically trickle down.
• The Liberal Democrats are somewhere in between.

I loved the picture painted by the conclusion that: “the battle-lines on Twitter at the next election will be between Labour activists and the Conservative Party machine, perhaps an indication of the left settling into a position of de-centralised opposition in advance of an expected Tory government.”

Tin hats anyone?