How to lose the yoof vote

 Present Tense:Ógra Fianna Fáil is to host - as one report put it - political "speed dating".

Members of the public will get five minutes each with a political representative or candidate, and will then score them on their approachability and listening skills. "We want people to make a date with politics," quipped chairman of the party's youth wing, Barry Andrews TD (age 39).

You could spend the rest of the month trying to parody that, but you'd come up short every time.

It's a general election year, which means that the politicians are reaching to twist their baseball caps backwards and doing a political breakdance in an attempt to win that elusive "youth vote". So, be prepared for a cavalcade of novel schemes aimed at "reaching out" to the "young people" who, we are repeatedly told, have no connection with politics and politicians, and who need to be reminded that politics "matters to their everyday lives". And how do they do this? By indulging in naive schemes that prove just the opposite.

They never stop to wonder if young people feel disconnected in part because, instead of actually talking about their ideas in an honest and interesting way, politicians would rather embarrass themselves like a middle-aged father desperate to impress his teenage daughter's friends.

That the speed-dating brainwave comes from the younger members of the party should not lull you into believing it is any more insightful. Membership of a political party, due to some mysterious force, has an ability to instantly add 15 years to a person's personality.

The speed-dating idea follows Ógra Fianna Fáil's recent third level campaign, which offered new members a chance to "Pimp My Party". How? By attaching sub-woofer boxes to Willie O'Dea's moustache?

Besides, Ógra's website shows an evasiveness that would put off even the most lonely and desperate of speed-daters. For instance, its online poll asks you to vote on the great issues of the day: the World Cup; whether David Cameron is up to the job; the role of the UN in the Middle East; what the Irish think of David Blaine. All major doorstep issues.

This general election will be the first in which the online battleground sees casualties. And just as they engage in youthful stints at their peril, the web is a place a politician should enter with care. When David Cameron began posting precisely relaxed get-to-know-me clips, the main achievement was to spawn a far more popular satirical response from Labour MP Siôn Simon and his impersonation of Cameron. ("I've got two kids - kid one, kid two. You like them? Take one - that's cool.")

Elsewhere, the US mid-term elections have already proved the internet's increasing potency. YouTube is littered with the digitised corpses of campaigns, one famously killed by a revealing comment caught on a camera phone.

A handful of Irish politicians have posted videos online, while several - many of them from the Labour Party - have got into blogging.

In November, Fine Gael Cllr Jim O'Leary unveiled his (almost literally) walking talking website. The front page features him strolling towards the camera as a series of bullet points drop down alongside him. Then, we see him leaning against a chair, perhaps having tired himself out from the effort. Finally, utterly exhausted from surfing the zeitgeist, he has a nice sit down.

At least O'Leary is trying to do something different. His party's official website features an excruciating video of Enda Kenny joking with the public on Grafton Street while a soundtrack of diddly-aye muzak makes it feel like you've been trapped in a lift at the Blarney Woollen Mills. He laughs with pan pipers. He laughs with shoppers. He has his picture taken by a camera phone and appears somewhat amazed when shown the result. You cannot hear what he is saying, but you wouldn't be surprised if it turned out to be something along the lines of: "And it makes phone calls as well? Whatever will they think of next?"

There will be rich pickings for bloggers. In this election, every soundbite, press release, stunt and counter-stunt will immediately be analysed, splayed and mocked online. Blogs such as Irishelection.com ("The Irish Election. By the Irish people."), will become minor players, chipping away at the bombast and bluff of the parties. Those parties, well used to the parry and thrust of the traditional battleground, will for the first time be faced with a perceptive and resourceful media with lightning reactions, inclined to be ruthless and, occasionally, potentially libellous. Some of the commentary will be trivial and unfair. Much of it will be spot on. And a lot of it will be very entertaining. The ubiquity of the camera phone will at some point reveal something, somewhere about somebody that could swing an election. And all of this is likely to reach far more "young people" than a romantic meet-and-greet that's being chaperoned by a ticking clock.