UK election day: gone to the dogs

Blog: Our ruff guide to the day's trending topics, as Britons take their pets to the polls.

2 min read

Dalal Jebril-Rogers

07 May, 2015

Barking constituency: dogs took the lead on polling day [AFP]

Today is a big day in the United Kingdom, a day that will decide the future of British politics for the next five years. And since the UK is known as a nation of animal-lovers, it may be no surprise that it is voters' pets which have taken the day's social media by storm.

The polling started at 7am, and along came the tweets.

More than a quarter a million tweets were posted regarding the election between the opening of polls and lunch, many using the Twitter-suggested hashtag - #IVoted - telling the world that they have taken part and asking others to do so.

Twitter Post

Since the start of the day, Facebook, Twitter, Google and other digital platforms have dedicated special features for people within the UK to cast their vote, and share the event with the world.

Google doodle

Scrolling down the tweets, you will see that the amount of young people tweeting about the elections is overwhelming. Whether or not this will be reflected in the polls is something we need to wait and see the results.

Twitter Post

And since the weather has been kind to Britons so far, voters made sure that their pets take part as well. Around 2,000 tweets of dogs at poll stations have been shared in the past two hours.

Twitter Post