Did Twitter lie to us?

I tweeted regularly all the way through the General Election campaign and kept an eye on all of the trending topics for most of the day.

For a while - actually all the time after the first Leaders' Debate on April 15 - Twitter gave me hope. It was all about Clegg with a sneaky bit of Gordon thrown in. Cameron was nowhere to be seen unless it was under the hashtag #idontwantdave.

These times, I mused in an unoriginal way, are indeed a-changing. 'Bye bye two party politics' and 'hello three party politics in a new era that has hope for smaller parties everywhere'.

I am not a passionate Lib Dem man. If anything I would love to see the Green Party rise up and take its rightful place at the forefront of British politics. But I was swayed man, really swayed (sorry for the 'man', the Bob Dylan ref in the previous par has overexcited me).

But then the truth came out and it was like cheap, strong cider - so hard to digest that little sicky-burps come out every now and again. The Lib Dems are nowhere. They're worse than nowhere in that they are less supported than they were under Charlie before the genius that is social media really had a chance to develop.

So what happened and what conclusions can be drawn?

I suppose the inevitable conclusion is that as much as Clegg was welcomed as a contender and held aloft as a shining example of a new wave of politics, the elecorate simply did not trust that a vote for Lib Dem was not be a vote for the party they disliked, be it Tory or Labour.

Some of his policies were attacked and then distorted by the frothing right-wing press. His immigration policy, which in fact was a well researched and thought-out plan on how to deal with a genuine issue in society, was summarised in on one word which Cameron repeated ad nauseum: 'amnesty'.

So can it be said that Twitter lied? Of course not. Twitter does not lie as it is representative of the views that are put into its database.

But perhaps the obvious conclusion is that Twitter is a tool most used by Liberal and left-leaning people. This then means that in a situation like the General Election it is not useful as a stand-alone means of assessing the mood of the people.

Of course, the other possibility is that it actually is the perfect stand-alone method of assessing the mood of the people in that actually at least 65 per cent of the population voted for liberal or left leaning parties. That then means that Twitter did not lie but the First Past The Post elecoral system that Big Dave is striving so hard to protect is telling porkies.

And back we come to proportional representation.

Perhaps this election holds hope for us yet. That a fairer voting system which actually represents the people is introduced.

Leaders' debates

So now they're over. We've had three debates and ITV, Sky and the BBC have been given a crack of the whip at giving the Tories, Labour and the Lib Dems a crack of the whip. I think it's fair to say that these US style debates are here to stay but has the experiment been a success?

1) It got people talking: It most certainly did. And not just talking but tweeting and blogging and Booing and Facebooking and YouTubing and all other kinds of social mediaing. There is always a buzz of excitement around a general election but it has been more pronounced this time with water-cooler talk straying from Glee, football and the latest meme to the leaders' debates. And lets face it, after the apathy of 2005 when somewhere between 45 per cent and 60 per cent of the population voted. #success

2) It brought the politicians to the people: Previously to see a leader in action you had to watch carefully edited clips or an interview from a journalist who quite frequently had an agenda be it political or simply the furthering of their own public image (yes that's you Paxman). #success

3) It highlighted the difference between the parties: Certainly each leader was given a soapbox to display their ideologies and opinions. However, they often couldn't agree on what that was. How many times did we hear a leader say 'that is not what our manifesto states' or my personal favourite from Clegg to Cameron: 'Let's assume that every time you talk about our policy, you're going to be wrong'. This did not help with clarifying the parties' stance on issues, if anything is muddied the waters further and identifying exactly what a leader's opinion was became almost impossible. #fail

4) It highlight the opportunity for choice and change: There clearly was choice in that there were three parties represented but two of those parties have swapped power in the UK since 1918 and the third held power before that and has been third ever since. What these debates did was reinforce the prominence of these three parties to the detriment of the wider political democracy and the anger of the SNP, Plaid Cymru, Greens and UKIP. I fear that votes for the minority parties will fall further this year as they struggle to make their voices heard. #fail

So on those four points it would appear to be in the balance but in my opinion, the first two are relatively superficial in that they are involved largely with engaging the electorate with the principle of the election, not with making and informed decision.

As I have already stated, these debates are here to stay - any leader not wanting to talk part would be hideously ridiculed and branded a coward. But perhaps a change to the format would be preferable.

Why wasn't the debate taken to Scotland and Wales with Alec Salmon and Ieuan Wyn Jones given a voice in parts of the UK where they enjoy huge support

Why haven't the Greens and UKIP been given a chance to get themselves heard? Surely that can only add to the opportunity for democratic choice.

Also do we need a referee and not just a facilitator? How many people are going to listen to Clegg and Cameron disagree about what it says in their respective manifestos and then scurry away and see who is right? I would have loved Dimbleby to step in and say "Actually David it does say on page 98 of your manifesto that blah blah blah, are you telling us that is incorrect?" I’m not naïve enough to think there is never any ambiguity in a manifesto but at least it would help us make an informed choice.

Still, it has really livened things up on the comedy front with Twitter abound with cracking jokes and comments. Of course some people tried a little to hard but here's a selection of some of my favourites:

@sugarshamen: "90 billion pounds on Trident missiles? Thats hardly enough for even a small nuclear holocaust! We'll be a laughing stock."

@charltonbrooker: "Bloke sitting to the left of questioner has a beard like one of those iron-filing magnetic novelty face things"

@markclapham: "How did all these people see the version of the #leadersdebate where Cameron was remotely convincing? Special 3D glasses with the Sun?"

And then of course you get this great screen grab (although it as, as far as I am aware, taken and circulated by Conservative campaigner @TimMontgomerie before being picked up and used by virtually all media outlets today)