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As the dust settles and the hard numbers start to become available, it increasingly looks as if key parts of the grand picture painted during the US presidential election were wrong. This picture – of unprecedented interest by ordinary people in the election – was repeatedly illuminated with stories of record numbers of people voting [...]

Whilst claims of huge increases in US electoral turnout this year have turned out to be myths, with turnout only rising by around 1% on 2004, the continued gradual improvement in turnout in British elections is going largely unremarked.
The improvement is not yet sufficient to cause rejoicing, but there are solid grounds for being cautiously [...]

In his first Gearbox Column, Mark Pack, Head of Innovations for the Liberal Democrat Party, points up a few differences between the US and the UK electoral systems. Matt Wardman is to blame for the subheadings.

Learning lessons from the US elections: four legal differences you need to know

With a new US President this week, the following few weeks are likely to see all sorts of prognostications about the lessons UK political parties and campaigners can and should be drawing.

However, many of the differences between American and British election campaigns are not the result of American campaigners having good ideas the British should copy, but rather are the result of four key legal differences between the two countries.

Click on the title fror the full article.

Garbo is away today, so I’ve stolen the slot to write about how the site will be developing.

This blog has gone through 3 stages, from personal blog to group blog to magazine style blog, which came in back in April. From the start we have been in a number of niches, and I want to build on that.

Two weeks ago I posted about Conservative Party Blogging Strategy.

In this post Mark Pack, who is the Had of Innovations for the Liberal Democrats. Here he outlines the Lib Dem online strategy (and why he thinks it is better than everybody else’s).

I would welcome further contributions to this article series. The subheads are mine.

The recent announcement that the Conservative Party will be launching an official party blog has highlighted the question of what the best blogging strategy is for political parties.

Blogging Tories

Although the Conservative Party has amongst its members and supporters some of the most successful political bloggers in the UK, the party’s official use of blogging has been very thin outside of individual blogs from prominent MPs. Indeed, Iain Dale recently highlighted the rather odd decision to remove links to himself and Conservative Home from the official Conservative Party website.

Labour Bloggers

Blogging on the Labour side has been much lower profile, with as little official blogging as from the Conservative and less success in the blogging activities of its members and supporters who - although producing some excellent content - just do not have the same overall profile as their Conservative rivals. Again, it is the blogging of a few individual MPs that does most to rectify matters. Labour does, though, not only provide links to Labour bloggers from their official website, but the links are there right on the front page.

The Liberal Democrat Approach

The Liberal Democrat approach has been rather different from the other two main parties - and (although as the man responsible for our blogging strategy, you might expect me to say this!) rather more effective.

This morning Tom Harris MP proposed that the Howden and Haltemprice by-election was a monumental “waste of public money” of the order of “two hundred grand”. I differ; it is well worth it.

Tom’s being rumbustious, so let’s have a meme.

“The best £200k waste of public money you can think of”.

I’ll tag:

• Gavin Whenman
• Miss Wagstaff
• Mark Pack
• The Winchester Whisperer
• Sadie at the Tavern
• Hamish
• Donal Blaney
• Paul Canning
• The Thunderdragon

I’m tempted to tag Tom Harris himself, but I’d better not.