It is suggested that all forthcoming elections are going to be shaped by that of Obama. In particular his propensity to employ Web 2.0 tools across a range of platforms in order to engage voters, draw them into his campaign website and mobilise them as activists. In the US the key aim is to fund the campaign, but that is somethign all parties need. In Quebec in 1995 parties were seen to be innovative in using the Internet to get their messages out to voters and the websites were one small part of a campaign that reached out across social media, often with the aim of embarrassing opponents as opposed to promoting the party spmsoring the message. However, the current campaign is seen as lagging behind in harnessing the Internet. While the parties are encouraging blogging they are all keeping their website information-based and not offering interactive features, but there are strategic reasons for this. Veronique Martel of Parti Quebecois says "We noticed in the last campaign that most of the bloggers on the PQ web site were youth... The strategy was to shift all those areas of discussion to Facebook or other such 2.0 web tools in order to be present where they are and where they interact." In other words rather than having areas of the website that allow open access and contributions, these appear elsewhere online keeping the branded websites clean. However there have been some innovations that have earned one party, Action Democratique, media attention and some notoriety. It is known as the booze-for-bucks scheme which appeared for a month or so but was then hastily removed after negative media comments. The idea was simply, anyone donating to the party could download a liquor store gift certificate; the more donated the more the reduction from the bill.

Why is Quebec not learning more from the Obama camapign. The reason they give is that the election was called too quickly for them to respond and so there were no websites in palce that could deal with the traffic or offer the features that Obama did. Hence quick fixes were employed. It is true Obama had 12 months to build his movement and find ways of attracting more supporters. However there are other reasons also I think. Obama's website was technologically interactive but did not offer opportunities for contribution beyond money. Visitors could not contribute in the same was as the UK Conseratives' Stand up, Speak out site or Segolene Royal's Notebooks of Hope offered. This takes time and expertise and you need visitors to be pulled in. He harnessed bloggers but also kept them outside of the site hub. But there is another key reason why Obama's tactics may not work elsewhere. There is no Obama. A candidate that captured public interest and attention and offered just what the people wanted while being outside (virtually) the system. Hence perhaps a safer strategy is to give potential contributors exactly what they want - give me some money for the campaign and in return you get a drink on me. Of course in an age when binge drinking is a huge social and media issue it will attract negative publicity but there is an idea here - so what would potential Labour, Conservative, LibDem etc etc voters like a reduction on?