Contribute to the SMS election poll

Mobile portal Boltblue is running "the first ever" election poll using mobiles on 5 June - two days before the general election. Text message who you intend to vote for and the company will collate the info and pump out what it hopes will be an accurate reflection of how the national will vote.

Boltblue reckons its represents a third of all SMS users in the UK, with four million users. Here comes the catch though: you'll need to register with Boltblue to get your vote counted [that's why we don't have the number to call]. Why would you want to do that? Well, you get access to dial tones and silly games and Boltblue gets to gather large amounts of valuable information.

The plus in terms of the poll is that the votes can be split into different age and socio-economic groups, producing some interesting stats.

The idea is good but this will be a definite snowball event. If no one does it then it will be pointless. However, if it picks up momentum it could stretch to a fair few people and produce a better poll that most of the acknowledged polls, which really only speak to small numbers of people.

It's a shame Boltblue has insisted on registering - if it had made it free and easy to do, it would have results that could be handed over to the media and given it a load more publicity than this approach. But there you go.

Oh, and Boltblue has rather foolishly in our eyes tried to tie the poll in with some kind of wobbly research to give it extra gravitas. "The Boltblue SMS election has been set up to accurately gauge the mood of the UK's voters and test the propensity of people to use their mobile devices as a voting tool."

Propensity, Smopensity. No. You see, "the announcement follows research that revealed 44% of young people who were planning not to take part in the election would do so if it they could use their phones to vote". Whatever.

PS. Boltblue. Are they connected to Shaun Woodward by any chance? ®

Related Link

Boltblue