Stephen Harper congratulates David Cameron

Just received:

‎​A few short moments ago, Prime Minister Harper spoke with the new British Prime Minister, David Cameron.
 
Prime Minister Harper warmly congratulated PM Cameron on his electoral victory and appointment as prime minister by Her Majesty the Queen.
 
Prime Minster Harper told Prime Minister Cameron that “we will see each other in Muskoka and Toronto at the upcoming G-8 and G-20 Summits. The relationship between our two countries means a lot and I look forward to working with you in the years to come. Give my best to your wife Samantha, Laureen and I look forward to meeting her. Once again Prime Minister congratulations and my best wishes.”
 
Note: Prime Minister Harper has previously met Prime Minister Cameron while he was leader of the opposition.

UK Tory GOTV E-day effort online

We’re still watching the votes come in on this side of the pond and it’s turning into a late night/early morning for our cousins in the UK as votes are counted and a hung (minority) Parliament looks like the outcome of the election in that country.

I spoke to the web gurus over at the British Conservative Party on election day to find out what they did to drive get out the vote (GOTV) efforts online. They revealed a peak into their strategy for mobilizing Britons to the polls.

First, an unprecedented buy of the British Youtube homepage’s ad unit. Cameron’s web team has admitted to me that they received millions of impressions of their video advert on e-day. Advertising on broadcast media is prohibited in the UK on election day and thus the Youtube ad placement is shrewd and effective. Part of the motivation to buy Youtube for May 7th was to keep the same rare legal platform for advertising out of the hands of their political opponents.

The UK Tories also mobilized a simple Facebook application which allowed the user to donate their status update message to a GOTV message for the Tories on election day. We saw a similar tactic used during the previous US presidential election for both McCain and Obama.

An email was sent out from David Cameron to the UK Tory supporter list for election day:

and later in the day, a second GOTV email from London mayor (and Conservative) Boris Johnson:

Finally, but most importantly, the integral element of the Tory e-day e-GOTV strategy has been Google advertising. The Tories have purchased keywords relating to their leader and to their political opponents and have targeted the ads geographically in key ridings.

And now, we continue to watch the votes come in. The magic number to beat a Labour/LibDem coalition is 310 seats, whereas a majority would be won with 326.