Canadian Political Parties Getting Web-Savvier

by Alex Langshur

The recent federal election marked a watershed for Canadian political parties in their use of the web to connect with voters. Borrowing lessons from the US and the UK, they more fully integrated their offline and online campaign strategies, demonstrating a much higher level of sophistication and awareness in the use and potential of the online channel. The level of online investment by the parties no doubt reflects the importance and newfound respect that senior party officials and the candidates now hold for the power and impact of the web. However, whether this new level of ‘web-awareness’ among the parties will have any spillover into increased scrutiny of e-government initiatives is still unclear.

In the US, candidates are regularly briefed on website traffic statistics along with the latest poll results. There is every reason to believe that senior officials and candidates of Canadian parties were similarly briefed as the winter 2006 election unfolded.

In our recent analysis of political party election websites we found that Canadian political parties did a better job at waging their campaigns online compared to the 2004 election. While they have improved their ability to get their message out, they still did not leverage the wisdom of the crowd or provide opportunities for visitors to become active and engaged. In short, election websites are enhanced lawn signs – they inform but don’t engage.

Some other findings in the report “Still Virtually Lawn Signs: Benchmarking Canadian political web sites during the 2006 election” include:

§     Canadian political websites lag their US and UK counterparts. This is particularly underscored in the way the UK and US make use of the channel to deliver highly targeted and regionally specific content, support grassroots initiatives, and raise funds.

§     Canadian party websites have added a lot of interactive features (blogs, Real Simple Syndication (RSS), podcasts, etc.), and are using the sites and email to more aggressively disseminate their messages and rebut those of their opponents. Despite this, visitors to Canadian election websites are treated largely as passive information consumers. No Canadian websites seized the opportunity to tap the wisdom of the crowd, leverage the social networks of visitors, or help issue-focused voters reach and connect to one another.

§     Canadian political parties clearly examined the online experiences of political parties elsewhere, adapting new practices to their current campaigns. In many cases, it is the right idea but often a case of poor execution – particularly in the use of email for outreach, online donations, messaging and usability. We note that the implementation of party online strategies lacks some of the sophistication noted in the US and UK.

§     The US still leads in using the web to engage and empower the grassroots. Both the Kerry and Bush campaigns provided online tools to allow supporters to create and connect with their engaged peers (e.g., Democratic ‘Meet-ups’ and Republican ‘House Parties for the President’) with minimal party involvement. No such tools are available on Canadian or UK party websites.


Just as in the UK and the US, there will be considerable post-election analysis of how each campaign was waged. We expect that for the first time, the web will figure prominently in this analysis as each party attempts to understand the most effective means to reach voters with targeted messages that resonate and engage. As this analysis diffuses through each party, it will only serve to strengthen awareness of the web and underscore how far it has moved into the mainstream as a key communications channel.

For government executives this generates a new challenge: as ministers become more web-savvy, they may demand better and more evolved online performance and performance metrics beyond simply visits or ‘hits’.


Alex Langshur is a principal with Hillwatch e-Services. Based in Ottawa and Boston, Hillwatch e-Services provides e-strategies built around issues and communities and unique performance evaluation products for the public, private and non-profit sectors. A full copy of the report is available at www.hillwatch.com/virtuallylawnsigns3.aspx.