By ,
Published May 03, 2016
While Conservative Party leader David Cameron was swept to victory in the U.K. General Election, a number of Silicon Valley heavyweights were busy touting technologies for the country’s voters.
Google rolled out a number of tools to help voters, for example, find information on local candidates and also catch up on the latest trending election videos. For the first time in Europe, U.K. voters could ask Google to provide information on local candidates simply by entering a postcode. YouTube’s Spotlight Channel has also been providing constant coverage of the election.
The search giant has also provided an up-to-the-minute breakdown of the country’s poll, drawn from data provided from organizations such as the U.K.’s Office for National Statistics and the Press Association.
One of Google’s more colorful election projects was a map detailing the most searches for each party leader across the U.K.’s 650 constituencies. Cameron came out top in the search project, followed by U.K. Independence Party (UKIP) leader Nigel Farage, Labour’s Ed Miliband, and the Liberal Democrats’ Nick Clegg.
Actual election results saw Cameron’s Conservatives win 331 seats in Parliament, followed by Labour with 232. The Scottish National Party, led by Nicola Sturgeon, clinched 56 seats, overtaking the Liberal Democrats to become the U.K.’s third-largest political party and sending shockwaves through the country’s political landscape. Clegg’s Liberal Democrats won 8 seats in the election, while UKIP won 1 seat.
Twitter was also busy during the election, with a banner prompting U.K. users to vote when they logged on to the micro-blogging site. More than 3.8 million tweets sent with the hashtag #GE2015 by early Thursday.
#IVoted was also widely used during U.K.’s ballot, with a fascinating map tracking the Twitter hashtag's appearance across the country.
Facebook also got in on the election day act, offering users a special “I’m a voter” button. Almost 3 million people had clicked on the button by the time polls closed at 10 p.m. local time on Thursday, according to the BBC.
https://www.foxnews.com/tech/how-social-media-giants-supported-uk-election-voters