In third place are the newspapers. This wasn't a good contest for them. The Telegraph followed opinion in the Tory party. It didn't lead it. It only endorsed Mr Cameron after it was clear he had already won. The Mail tried to get Ken Clarke elected and failed. It also failed to ignite the drugs row. The Sun was peripheral. The right-wing press never got their act together in this election contest and are unlikely to be as feared/ respected/ as influential ever again.
In second place I'm going to award the internet. I think this site and other bloggers have often been ahead of the newspapers but, much more importantly, have been the pollsters and YouGov, the internet pollster, in particular. I'll publish the full results of ConservativeDemocracy.com's survey soon (you can still take part by the way) but the lead reason for people voting for Mr Cameron was that they thought he was popular with the public. The Davis team were reportedly devastated by the YouGov poll of the weekend after conference which showed such a big swing to Mr Cameron.
In first place I'm awarding Nick Robinson, BBC's Political Editor, and Tom Bradby, his successor at ITN. Bradby, in particular, led the reporting of DD's conference speech. It bombed and it bombed badly he told the public (anh interpretation that still infuriates the Davis-ites). These two talking heads - and the production/editorial teams behind them - had big influences on this contest and will continue to be very big players in politics for the next few years (at least until the blogosphere really hits its potential heights).
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PS Iain Dale, Chief of Staff to DD, has posted that camp's own awards results here.
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