Launch for New UK Public Opinion Specialist

A new agency called Wess Digital has been set up in the UK, to offer political parties and campaign groups access to data on people's political voting preferences and their support for specific issues-driven campaigns.

The new firm is the creation of digital specialist Andrew Whitehurst, Matthew Elliott of the part-Tory funded Taxpayers' Alliance, former Labour digital strategist Jag Singh, and Guido Fawkes blogger Paul Staines. Its 'Metis' database brings together data from political and social campaigns, aggregated census records, social media profiles and online political ad response data.

Analysis of this data will be made available to political campaigners to help them influence grassroots campaigns, together with tools to enable them to manage mass communication via e-mail, phone, social media and text messaging.

The founders say their company is taking advantage of the shift towards non-partisan issue-based campaigning from large-scale partisan political mobilisation efforts.

Whitehurst (pictured) comments: 'The most effective political campaigns are those which speak to voters on a one-to-one basis. Used correctly and ethically, these new technological opportunities allow campaigns to engage with a wider group of people on their own terms, without the expensive overheads of recent years, making politics more democratic and inclusive. Wess is bringing data-driven campaigning to UK politics.'

Web site: www.wessdigital.com .