LONDON — It towers 443 feet above the River Thames and gives tourists spectacular views of the city, but on Friday night the London Eye turned political, transforming into a pre-election pie chart.
There have been some 52 million interactions on Facebook connected to the May 7 vote, with the right-wing UK Independence Party the-most talked about, clocking up 15.6 million of those. A like, share or comment counts as a single interaction.
Overall, Facebook expects the election to be the biggest topic discussed by users in the UK — where it has 35 million users — this year.
In fact, the social network says interactions around all of the main parties have increased in the last few weeks.In fact, the social network says interactions around all of the main parties have increased in the last few weeks.
After UKIP, the Conservatives were the second most-discussed party with 12.2 million interactions, followed by Labour with 9.7 million, the Liberal Democrats with 2 million, the Scottish National Party with 2 million, the Green Party with 1.3 million, the Democratic Unionist Party with 40,000, Plaid Cymru with 31,000 and Sinn Féin with 4,000.
Starting Friday until election day, a representation of the anonymised number of interactions will appear on the giant Ferris wheel every night at 9:30 p.m. BST, with the latest information being shown.
Facebook says it hopes the large-scale data visualisation, located close to Westminster, will help increase actual voter turnout on election day.
Earlier this year, the BBC reported that the Conservatives were spending more than £100,000 a month on Facebook and as much as £3,000 for each constituency campaign in the run up to the election.
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