Abstract27

Election campaign websites for candidates, lists and political parties

3 min read

Talk to us about your campaign

An election campaign has a fixed date, a team of volunteers and very little time. Your website has to be online fast, look credible from day one, and let anyone in the team publish without calling a developer. We build election campaign websites for candidates, lists, political parties and elected representatives — and we have done it for real lists in real elections, in French and in English.

What a campaign website needs

  • A page for every candidate — photo, role on the list, a short biography — and a team grid on the home page.
  • Your manifesto, split into themes people can read and share one by one.
  • A "How to vote" page: dates, polling stations, postal or online voting. It is often the most visited page in the final week.
  • News and events: meetings, interviews, press coverage.
  • A newsletter sent from the site itself — supporters sign up on the site and you write to them from the same screen you publish on. No separate emailing tool, and the list stays yours.
  • Bilingual if your electorate is: French and English side by side, with a language switcher on every page.
  • Your colours, your photos, your logo — not a template anyone could recognise.

Built on open-source software

Every site runs on Ghost®, the open-source publishing platform used by newsrooms. The editor is simple enough for a volunteer to post a news item in two minutes, and the content can be exported at any time — nothing is locked in.

For campaigns that want a fully bespoke design, we also build a custom front end on top of two Ghost instances, one per language. That is what we did for the list Ensemble! (see below).

Live in days, not months

A campaign cannot wait for a three-month web project. We start from a theme designed for campaigns — hero with the team photo, candidate grid, manifesto and how-to-vote pages — put it in your colours, load your candidates and hand over the keys. Your team is trained to publish on its own.

Compliance, built in

  • Digital imprints (UK): since the Elections Act 2022, digital campaign material must say who published it. We put the imprint in the site footer so it appears on every page.
  • Personal data: newsletter sign-ups use an explicit opt-in, with a privacy page and a one-click unsubscribe link in every email.
  • French elections: if you are standing in a French election, we plan for the rules on campaign spending and the publishing freeze before polling day.

After polling day

A campaign site doesn't have to go dark the morning after the vote. It can become the channel your elected representatives use to report back to the community: surgeries, interviews, positions on local issues. The audience you built during the campaign keeps receiving your news.

Our political and civic projects

We have built and host websites for consular election lists in the United Kingdom and for a civic association. They are listed below, with a detailed case study for each one.

Pricing

Every site includes managed hosting for Ghost, SSL, daily backups and support. See our plans and pricing, or tell us about your campaign and we'll send you a quote.

Our work for candidates, lists and civic organisations

All case studies →

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