While election fever may be growing, AiB still isn’t planning to be dominated by psephology. But it’s hard to avoid just now.
Let’s face it, how many national elections feature the same candidate in six different constituencies?
Drum roll please for Bob McCartney, who is either desperate to retain his seat in the assembly or couldn’t find enough other UKUP candidates to spread across the 13 constituencies that they’re targeting.
You’ll see his name on the ballot in Fermanagh and South Tyrone, Foyle, Lagan Valley, North Belfast, North Down, South Antrim, West Tyrone.
What happens if he wins two or more seats? Double-length speeches!
And just whose vote is he trying to damage in these constituencies? For sure he's offering an anti-agreement candidate on the ballots. But his reward won't be in terms of actual seats. More likely, it's just to give him column inches and a thin but wide "mandate across Northern Ireland" to continue to oppose Good Friday and St Andrews.
Time will tell. But only in Northern Ireland! (Update: Just noticed that Rainbow George is somewhat incongruously standing in all four Belfast constituencies for Making Politicians History. Remember the unsuccessful MPH postcard campaign? And Mark Devenport has an opinion piece about the implications.)
I’ve been banging on about candidates and politicians engaging with the public. Hillary Clinton was an easy example of someone trying to Let the Conversation Begin™.
But what about our next bout of local elections in Northern Ireland?
Will the major parties continue sticking posters to lamp posts with cable ties, dropping leaflets through our letterboxes, and bickering publicly on local radio and television? Or will they start to dip their toes in the online world?
Well, hats off to Brian Wilson who is standing for the Green Party in North Down. (Another rival to one of the many Bob McCartneys and also to newcomer Brian Rowan who we talked about before.)
Embedded video removed ... but you can still view it at YouTube. (It was messing up Blogger's formatting.)
He went all the way up to the Giant’s Causeway (slightly north of his constituency boundary) to film the intro for his four minute campaign video, hosted on YouTube.
Brian wins first prize in the race for the Web 2.0 vote. Unfortunately, like much of Web 2.0, the prize is over-hyped and may well under-deliver!
Feels good to be linking back to Slugger O’Toole for once - instead of all the traffic coming my way!
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