It wasn’t long ago that we knew two things for sure about the general election; one of them a constant – the election

Posters such as this from spooof website mydavidcameron.com are helping to shape this general election

would be a two horse race, and the other a sea change – this would be the first social media election.

What a difference a few weeks makes. Suddenly it’s a three horse race with the Liberals polling as high in votes, if not potential seats, as Labor and the Tories, but it wasn’t grass roots support activated through a killer social media campaign that can take credit for the historic polling change. Rather it was the resurgence of that old media faithful, TV, that can take the credit.  Almost 10 million tuned into the leaders debate on ITV and 10 million plus watched the final BBC debate last night,  numbers that dwarf the online audiences for politics. While the ground swell of online political argument has failed to materialise to the level expected.

So should we be writing off the power of the net to influence politics? Far from it; TV was the medium to deliver the election debates, but online has still been playing its part too. Witness the million-plus people who have used YouTube and on demand TV services online to watch and re-watch the debate, and the lively Twitter and forum debates about the relative merits of the leaders.

It’s on a smaller scale in niche areas that social media is having the most impact, reaching young and disaffected voters. Take a look at www.mydavidcameron.com for example - the raft of spoof pictures that emanated from it have engaged users to create and distribute their own content.  While the Liberals talk about hundreds of thousands visiting their comedy labservative.com site.

Mass “broadcast” media is still the activator for political campaigns, but the longtail, discussion and increasingly direct engagement lives online.  

When the dust settles we see once again it’s content, not platform that is king, the challenge for online marketers of all colours is to deliver content as compelling as the TV debates.  

Oh and one more thing, online has the best jokes, from Twitter this morning:   “Just heard amazing audio of Nick Griffin fuming in a car about being introduced to a woman who wasn’t bigoted”.