英国政治家转向社交媒体拉票

U.S. President Barack Obama used social media as a key campaign tool to win election victories in 2008 and 2012. Now it's the United Kingdom's turn to have its national election transformed, as politicians compete to go viral ahead of voting on Thursday.

With nearly ten million visitors a month-- Netmums is Britain's largest website for mothers.

Mums who have some troubling news for the country's top politicians ahead of Thursday's national election.

"We surveyed over 2,500 of our Netmums users ahead of this general election to find out the issues that matter to them most, what was really fascinating about that was that nine out of ten of those 2,500 women said that the three main political parties in the UK do not currently understand what their facing in their everyday lives and that they really didn't know who they were going to vote for in this election," said Annie O'Leary, editor in chief, Netmums.

In a bid to win over those mothers and other voters, Britain's main political parties have turned en-masse to the Internet... social media in particular.

For the main opposition Labour party and its leader Ed Miliband, Twitter has been the key campaign tool.

But different parties favor different social media.

The ruling Conservative party has reportedly been spending the equivalent of more than 150,000 U.S. dollars monthly on campaign material intended just for Facebook.

Political TV ads have always been banned in Britain. Now, social media analysts say even political billboards are disappearing - and popping up instead online.

"This election all of those billboard designs have really been transformed onto Twitter, attached to the tweets, attached to posts on Facebook and they've been attached to YouTube videos so there's been a massive change in the way political parties have really tried to get in touch with their electorate," said Russell Merryman, Senior Lecturer of Digital Media, London College of Communication.

That doesn't mean traditional media has been completely displaced.

"There's been a greater mix in the way that social media and old media all of this has come together that is very different in the way the mix has been before," Merryman said.

Opinion polling, which has long involved time-consuming phone or face-to-face interviews, is also being transformed.

Annie O'Leary said, "We can get 2,500 responses from women in minutes if we put questions out to them on the general election."

Whether the enormous shift towards campaigning online has paid off will all be part of the post-election analysis at the end of the week, much of it no doubt online.