Watching the Andrew Marr show yesterday (does anyone else find the opening credits completely ridiculous? You host a talk show, not a M16 operation!) I heard one of the guests -apologies, I wasn't paying enough attention at the time, to busy laughing at the credits - saying this election campaign had bought back the importance of telvision. The argument was solely based on the debate coverage and shots of candidates running round consituencies shaking the hands of anyone who came within ten yards of them.
But to say this has been a TV campaign would be wrong. I have never seen so much hype over an election, and it's not because 3 guys stood in front of a camera and talked utter garbage for 2 hours. It's down to how easy it is now for people to express and share opinions very easily using the web and real time tools. How many surveys have been around this year? Daily, hourly in fact. 'Lib Dems are winning according to Twitter', 'Labour catching up according to online poll', 'Raving Loony party odds on says Facebook data', it's relentless.
With this much information available to digest it would be understandable if every spin doctor in the country just collapsed with exhaustion. The whole thing is chaos, and they have absolutely no idea what to target next. The real time update element has bought a huge bundle of policy messes and to be honest, it might as well be a flick of the coin now. It's just another example to indicate, if we want real time web, we need tools able to handle the overload. Otherwise, we could be left with a loony majority yet.
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