‘CROWDSOURCING’- it’s the buzz-word that seems to be puzzling the mainstream British political parties in their preparation for next month’s General Election.

Crowdsourcing proved a key jigsaw piece for the Democrats and Barack Obama in the U.S. Presidential election campaign and we all know what happened there. The British parties would undoubtedly like to replicate aspects of Obama’s success but their recent attempts appear far removed from the Democrat’s model and badly thought out.

With predictions of a hung parliament looming, the party that attracts the most online communities will surely be in the best position to capitalise on their competitor’s failings. Will one of Labour, the Conservatives or the Liberal Democrats stand out amongst the online crowds and tap into the wide voting numbers? Below, we offer a few suggestions…

What are the British political parties doing at the moment?

At the very least, all three main parties recognise the importance of Crowdsourcing as an idea.

Labour has turned to Crowdsourcing in an attempt to see if their current group of supporters can outdo their contracted advertising agency (Saatchi and Saatchi).  Richard Huntington, the director of strategy at Saatchi and Saatchi, says:

“We are learning that the way to do communications is not to tell people what you want them to hear but to let people play. This is the sort of thing that all marketers ought to be exploring right now.”

The Conservatives have already attempted to Crowdsource in their response to last week’s budget announcement. The idea revolved around interested members of the public helping the Conservatives to scrutinise the full budget statement and alert them of any relevant discrepancies or particular areas that they could focus upon attacking Labour. However, there has been an ominous silence from Conservative HQ since the release of the budget.

BBC technology blogger Rory-Cellan Jones, said:

“A spokeswoman came back with a rather vague reply. Yes there had been ‘hundreds of really good comments’, though they appeared to fall more into the category of opinion rather than fresh analysis. She could not give me any example of a detail spotted by the web crowd that had eluded the party’s Treasury team…”

Meanwhile the Liberal Democrats appear to have quietly gone about formulating a similar strategy, by offering their supporters a chance to create their own posters for the party’s online campaign.

But are the British parties really optimising the use of Crowdsourcing in their election trail?

What lessons can be learnt from Obama?

Interaction, interaction, interaction- Obama’s Crowdsourced campaign was particularly smart in this regard. With a large online presence supporting him, Obama instructed his team to go and source the internet to find out where people were most interactive on the internet. The intention was to form connections with potential voters, and to introduce them to his ‘crowd’ at ‘My Barack Obama’, where specific policy issues could be discussed.

In his interim position as President-elect, Obama offered the American public a chance to submit questions for his administration and vote on the priority in which they should be answered. Obama effectively created a co-created product, which conceded a degree of political power in exchange for closer interaction with his ‘consumers’, which has generated a more direct form of democracy.

Failure to engage with the crowd renders the whole concept of Crowdsourcing pointless. There is little point giving lip-service to an online audience because ultimately, they are a cross-section of a technological generation of voters. Feedback is key- and especially at this particular election, where resources are tighter and the issues are more contentious.

There will be plenty of hype surrounding the three live television debates between Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Nick Clegg, but gauging the wider audience reaction will be more crucial than the content of the debate alone. The answer is to harness the opinions together, consider what the common consensus is on the most prominent issues and create dialogue in subsequent debates or public speeches.

Where Obama was particularly successful was in his ability to direct social network crowds towards his own website ‘My Barack Obama.’ By heavily canvassing grassroots opinion, he allowed the crowd to naturally evolve and generate momentum for his campaign. Allowing a degree of transparency with the crowd, voters will feel a greater affinity towards the party. If the feeling for a candidate/party is strong enough, then the crowd will be willing to canvass support too. They will shoot campaign videos, generate fresh discussions in website forums and articles and examples such as the independent ‘mydavidcameron’ websites will increase in number and greater mainstream prominence.

The British parties will be unable to prepare their Crowdsourced campaigns as meticulously as the Democrat model, which began its search for a presidential candidate almost immediately after the 2006 mid-term elections. Their website (‘Act Blue’) set up fundraising accounts for declared and prospective presidential candidates asking supporters to donate to their chosen candidate. If the candidate ran, they received the donations. If not, it was awarded to the party itself.

Back in the UK

Clearly such a model would need re-modification in Britain, but the basic ideas are there for the main political parties. Form a crowd, interact with the crowd, and genuinely involve the crowd in stages of the decision making process, and the crowd will eventually become more receptive to the discussions and policy issues involved in their election campaign.

For Crowdsourcing to have a genuine effect on the British political system, the parties must not jettison their crowds until the next election campaign comes along. Crowds take time to develop and to see Obamaesque effects, they must be interactive and innovatively maintained during a Parliament term.

In such a highly developed technological age, the British political parties are missing out on an opportunity to connect with a greater percentage of the most apathetic of voters- including young people. Ivor Gaber, a professor of political campaigning and reporting at City University in London, says:

 “…we’ve seen in the UK over the years a process of political disengagement particularly from young people- and if they are more comfortable accessing political information online then this is one way to re-engage them.”

With the margins at the 2010 General Election so fine, can the mainstream British political parties really afford to ignore the Crowdsourcing route long-term?