Nick Clegg wins mock election on Facebook

Facebook has more subscribers in the UK than the number of votes cast in the last general election

Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg has won a mock election on Facebook, picking up 42 per cent of the 463,000 votes cast over the bank holiday weekend.

Tory leader David Cameron came second with 31 per cent, and Labour leader Gordon Brown was third with 27 per cent.

Facebook policy director Richard Allan used the results to trumpet the success of a range of election-oriented applications launched by the social networking site since campaigning started on 6 April.

"Facebook has more [subscribers] in the UK than the number of votes cast in the last general election. Since the [2010] election was called, we have seen people in the UK flock to Facebook to get informed, share their opinions and rate the candidates' debate performances," he wrote in a blog post.

Allan also claimed that Facebook had enabled "thousands" of voters to register by offering an application in association with the Electoral Commission which allowed users to download a personalised voter registration form.

Facebook's Democracy UK page, meanwhile, which has over 160,000 fans, had helped people to get a better understanding of some of the key issues in the election debate, according to Allan.

"Democracy UK on Facebook has posted a constant stream of serious and light-hearted news and discussion, including question-and-answer sessions with notable journalists providing a range of opinions," he said.

The page also hosted two applications, VoteMatch and My Vote Advisor, in an effort to help users determine which party and policies best suited them, and Allan said that Facebook's live Rate the Debate application had proved highly popular.

"Rate the Debate allowed people to participate in a real-time 'dial test' to indicate their feelings about what was being said at that moment in time and seeing aggregated results," he said.

Facebook also partnered with YouTube during the election campaign to source questions for the three leaders to answer. Allan claimed that this had also proved popular, and that 180,000 votes were made and over 5,300 questions submitted.