WITH eight weeks of campaigning ahead of a July 2 election, you would be quite correct in thinking the head-butting contest between Tony Windsor and Barnaby Joyce for the seat of New England has started in earnest.
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Both use social media, and as a self-confessed Twitter tragic, Mr Windsor fired off a tweet on May 8: “Liverpool Plains Mayor posting Joyce advertising on politically neutral Quirindi Rugby club ...is this the price for Quirindi water supply?”.
And Barnaby let fly the next day: “Shorten sick of ‘three word slogans’ which like ‘people before politics’ is a three word slogan.”
These were only two of many tweets from both camps, which demonstrated the immediacy social media brings to modern elections.
Candidates using tailored views for different parts of the electorate has been a credibility risk for some time now.
For Mr Windsor, the wide ranging social comment, which brought a national narrative and words of encouragement to him, was one reason why he looked at running for the Senate before making his final decision run in the House of Representatives to contest the seat of New England.
Mr Joyce ran an extensive Facebook election campaign in 2013, and is doing so again this time around.
This post from April 19, 2013, revealed he was clearly on the hustings.
“Was out and about in the New England region yesterday and today. Visited Quirindi, cattle sale in Tamworth, managed to fit in some exercise and went for a jog around Manilla. Off to Armidale now, will stop by Bendemeer and Uralla on the way through,” it read.
So both members take the influence of social media seriously, and consider it to be an important part of their campaigns, but what do the figures reveal when numbers are compared?
Well, Mr Joyce has 26,146 Facebook likes and 68,640 Twitter followers compared to Mr Windsor’s 18,646 likes and 28,914 followers on Twitter.
There are about 100,000 voters in this seat.
