My view: Mums get net returns as politicians queue up to woo their vital votes

Mummy power is now a force to be reckoned with, thanks in no small part to parenting website Mumsnet, with party leaders falling over themselves to win the approval of its members – and, of course, their votes.

Mumsnet Woman is apparently capable of swinging the election and so each main party leader has felt obliged to take part in its online chats (Gordon Brown got tuts for refusing to reveal his favourite biscuit, but must have been forgiven as he and Mrs B went to its 10th birthday party last month). The site claims to have one million visitors a month, 95 per cent of whom are female and 70 per cent have a degree or equivalent. So far, so... middle class.

I logged on to Mumsnet recently, expecting to find it, well, a bit too mumsy for me, but actually, I was pleasantly surprised – at first glance, anyway.

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I wasn't too impressed by the Boden discount, but I was delighted to see that Mumsnet and its members are getting properly

stuck into the election, with a heartening degree of enthusiasm, the site carrying out its own polls, hosting blogs from marginal seats, plus a comprehensive politics talk round-up.

It's easy to see why the political parties feel the site is both a mood gauge and a potential vote swinger. In political terms, Mumsnet seems to be fairly representative. Back in February, it ran a poll which showed the three main political parties more or less evenly matched, Labour and the Lib Dems with about a quarter of the votes each, the Tories slightly under, and the remainder made up of Don't Knows, Greens and others. There was a second poll after the budget, which saw the Lib-Dems' popularity slightly dip. But after the TV debate last week, Nick Clegg saw a massive surge in Mumsnet popularity, with its ensuing poll showing that

44.8 per cent of Mumsnetters intended to vote for the Liberal Democrats – a 97 per cent increase on the previous poll, just three weeks before, indicating that those Mumsnetters sure can have their heads turned by a nice gold tie and an easy smile.

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Not all mums are Mumsnetters, however. Some of us don't have the time to log on to swap revision tips and tales of how annoying but really clever our children are. What's more, some of us don't have the stomach for its online chat forums, where it seems some mothers exchange advice and insults in equal measure (there have been accusations of online bullying). Some Mumsnetters do seem to have quite a lot of time on their hands.

But the success of both Mumsnet and its polls suggests that there's a huge number of middle-class floating, voting mothers out there. Yet politicians would do well to note

that the site is called Mumsnet, not Wivesnet. Most women who are mums view mothering as their most important role, far more important than being half a married couple, even if they are able to gaze in adoration at their spouse as convincingly as Samantha, Sarah and now Miriam.

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