People happier voting on the web

Thirteen per cent admit to having an MP as "a friend" on Facebook

More than three-quarters of the electorate would vote via the internet if they could, according to a major survey conducted this week.

The survey, conducted by media consultants Lewis Communications, interviewed 1,000 people on their attitudes to the use of social media and digital technology in politics.

Some 56 per cent of those polled had visited political websites, signalling a substantial increase in online politics compared with 1995.

About a quarter, 24 per cent, regard Twitter as an essential communications tool for politicians, but only 27 per cent said they would be encouraged to vote for a particular MP if contacted on a social networking site, compared with 47 per cent who said they would not.

Just over a quarter successfully identified Guido Fawkes, the most prominent of the political bloggers, 13 per cent admitted to having an MP as "a friend" on Facebook but six per cent thought "tweet" was a nickname for a fool.

Lewis' digital PR director Eb Adeyeri said: "Many commentators believe this will be the UK's first internet election with politicians exploiting channels such as Facebook and Twitter to convey their message."

Fifteen per cent of those polled thought Tory leader David Cameron would have the most followers on Twitter despite his comment that "too many tweets make a tw*t".

And the general level of ignorance around social networking was demonstrated by the finding that four per cent of respondents said they thought former Labour premier Clement Attlee had the greatest number of twitter fans, even though he died in 1997 before twitter had been invented.

Nearly half identified Kerry McCarthy as Labour's Twitter tsar, but 19 per cent thought she was a TV presenter and 18 per cent an Irish pop star.

Attempts to launch an online voting process were put on hold in favour of a drive to popularise postal voting largely through fears of personation and a resistance, largely on the Labour side, to a personal registration system requiring individual identification.