96 Council Candidates Access Our System – Over 100,000 Views Since Launch

You decide the next Wrexham Council on May 4th, which is just NINE days away. We take a look at our surprisingly popular election section so far…

We launched the election section on April 6th, and since then there has been over 100,000 page views in /election2017/ alone. The idea is simple, we post out 155 letters to all candidates asking them to create a quick profile – plus ask them to take part in Q&A.

The questions are quite lengthy and overall so far we have had 138,000 words written by candidates in reply – so some have spent a fair bit of time explaining their views in the hope you will vote for them and or their party.

It will be no shock that those with profiles, answers to questions and profile pictures are the most read with several candidates already seeing around 1,000 reads of their completed pages.

Many have asked who has been the most read, or most active and inactive wards, and who has or has not taken part. Below are some stats overviews and further details as of lunchtime today (Tuesday 25th April)

In the last week:

• Llay has been the most read ward page, followed by Brymbo and then Gresford.
• Zoe Clarke in Brymbo was the most read candidate page.
• The three least read candidate pages were Paula Williams in Pant, Mike Adams in Bronington and David Jones in Erddig. All of whom have not accessed the system so their pages are all but blank, and so have single digit reads.
• The average time spent reading completed profiles is just over three minutes.
• People who read a candidate page will often then read 2-3 other pages as well.

Since we started the section, so roughly the last three weeks…

• Over 100,000 pages have been served in the /election2017/ section.
• 96 candidates have accessed the system out of a possible 155, that is 62%
• Using the averages on time spent on pages we think roughly 75 days of human time has been spent reading the pages.
• Acton and the first candidate (Shaun Davies) was the most read to begin with as people had a nose at the first on the lists to see how the system worked.
• The majority of wards have information from one or more candidates.
• Aside from the seats already won due to no competition, Bronington, New Broughton, Overton, Pen-Y-Cae + Ruabon South and Pant have had no profiles let alone Q&A’s answered – despite some logins.
• Out of Wrexham Council’s Executive Board that are re-standing in contested wards we have profiles from David A Bithell and Ronnie Prince we have full Q&A’s from Hugh Jones
• Executive Board member Bob Dutton has not logged in and neither has Council Leader Mark Pritchard,  whereas Joan Lowe has logged in but yet to submit a profile or answer the question set.

Several candidates are still working on their Q&A sections, as the system allows them to save progress before hitting publish for the final time.

We have helped a few candidates with the submission process, and replaced a few ‘lost’ letters with invite codes. If you are a candidate who has inadvertently not taken part yet please pop us an email on [email protected] and we will do our best to help out.

Check our Wrexham.com/election2017/ NOW to see who is standing for your ward, and what they have to say…