Social Media & the 2012 Election

I was inspired by the 2008 election to research and study the affect that social media, and digital technology had on political activity. For the first time in my life, I actually noticed my facebook friends posting comments, statuses or articles about the campaigns.  Regardless of political viewpoints, it invigorated me to see that people actually had started to care more about politics -- something that has a major impact on all our lives.  As it turns out, the 2008 election was marked as one of the most "digital" elections ever.  The Obama campaign, in particular, utilized social media websites such as Twitter and Facebook to reach an audience that had typically been written off in the past. My graduate thesis used a study conducted by the Pew organization and essentially I found the following: As age increases above 21, young adults are significantly more likely to vote.  Between 18-21 young adults are almost a misnomer and are very difficult to chart or predict.  That is what makes this age group so valuable. This age group can be a "game changer".  Most voting figures or predictions are based on those demographics that are most likely to vote - however if those "unpredictable" groups are large enough, they can change the outcome of an election. I believe this is what we saw in 2008.  Young adults, mobilized by social media, came out in force to vote/support/donate to Obama.  He was young charismatic, different, and most importantly he seemed to know how to reach  them. John McCain was none of that.

So, here we are in 2012, and the tech battle is on again. Except this time, Mitt Romney is fighting back in a way that John McCain never did. While Obama still dominates with 27 million fans on Facebook to Romney's 2 million, the Romney camp is not giving up.  The Washington Post reported that last week Romney had ove 323,000 mentions on twitter, while Obama barely broke 200,000.  Not that this means much - as the Post also reports that only 5% of those followers are considered 'engaged' (by commenting, liking, or reposting things) to Romney's 32%.  The question at hand is not whether or not Obama still has the young adult poppulation's support, but whether he will be able to actually mobilize them to the polls. In that case, Obama's 5% seems rather weak. 

One aspect of the Romney campaign that is very fascinating is that he has outsourced to tech companies to assist in making his campaign as successful as possible.  Tapping into the market to leverage resources is a very "Romney" idea -- using the private sector to improve the public sector. We will see how it works out, and I hope it does. :)

Check out the article: "Romney advisers, aiming to pop Obama’s digital balloon, pump up online campaign" on www.washingtonpost.com for more information on this topic!

xo
M