With a general election in our midst, candidates across Canada are scrambling for attention. Most political parties have centralized their campaign websites, providing subdomains and subdirectories for either specific candidates or specific ridings (see our previous post). However, some candidates and party associations have created their own websites maintained at custom domains.
Individual Branding
Some candidates prefer the autonomy of their own branding for their presence on the web. Once such example is the Conservative Candidate for Don Valley West, Yvonne Robertson, who registered her own name as a domain name and maintains her own campaign website connected to that domain. Simply for reserving the name, it is a good registration strategy to try to obtain your own name as a domain, particularly if it is an unusual name.
Regional Associations
Rather than maintain their website with their parent organization, some regional party organizations maintain their own website. One such example is the Yukon Liberal Caucus, who maintain their own website under yukonliberalcaucus.ca. Such domains are typically registered with the region followed by the party.
Party Caucuses
Most political parties are not monolithic in terms of their policy sets. As such, some political caucuses organized around a particular issue or policy goal maintain their own domains and web presence. The Democratic Socialist Caucus of the New Democratic Party have their own caucus website maintained independently of the NDP’s own website, ndpsocialists.ca. These websites are rather rare, as ad-hoc organizations of party members typically operate on social media, particularly Facebook.
The Role of Social Media
With social media sites now an entrenched part of how we interact with each other, candidates for office have taken to platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram as a means of communicating directly with constituents. Domains and small landing sites therefore remain an excellent method of pointing interested users towards the Facebook groups and Twitter feeds of candidates and party organizations to keep them apprised of new policy stances and important events.
Note: Domain Name News does not endorse any of the above organizations or candidates.
