The Web 2.0 Election: Does the Internet Matter in Election Politics?
"Lecterns are so 2004," says AP writer Jake Coyle. Not wanting to feel left out after all the CNN-YouTube debate hoopla, MySpace and MTV announced a series of one-on-one "candidate forums" yesterday. Rather than a debate format, candidates will appear individually to answer questions submitted by MySpace users specifically for them. "We very much want to take the Iowa or New Hampshire living room global," said GM of MySpaceTV, Jeff Berman, referring to the informal, small group meetings candidates often hold in those early primary states.
Much has been made of the web's increased role in these latest US presidential elections. But does it really matter? In 2004, there was a lot of attention given to Howard Dean's power house, grassroots Internet-fueled primary campaign -- he flamed out and was a footnote by February. Success on the web did not translate to success at the polls in Dean's case, and there is evidence that history may be repeating. So just what might it look like if web 2.0 picked the president?
In June, I wrote that "by creating platforms for candidates and talking directly to the people, Google has positioned themselves as a major force in shaping American political policy (and by extension, have a far reaching global effect)." I argued that Google, through YouTube especially, has given candidates an extremely cost-effective way to reach millions of potential voters. The same has been said for MySpace, Facebook, and other social networks.
But predicting the next US election based on Internet popularity might be a big mistake. There appears to be a growing disconnect in what the Internet might suggest vs. the picture that polling data paints. Judging by MySpace friends and YouTube channel views, America is preparing for a showdown of Barack Obama (Democrat) and Ron Paul (Republican). Obama's 169,000 MySpace friends are the most of any candidate, and his 11 million YouTube channel views place him laughably ahead of the competition. Hillary Clinton's 849,000 channel views is the next closest on YouTube amongst Democratic contenders (her 133,000 MySpace friends presents a closer gap, though). On the Republican side, Ron Paul has 56,000 MySpace friends -- about 40% more than the next closest candidate, and his 3.3 million YouTube views make him the only other presidential candidate to pass the million mark.
But all of the latest polling data concludes that neither Paul nor Obama are the presumptive nominees for their respective parties. Every poll conducted this month, from Quinnipiac, to USA Today, to CNN gives Clinton a commanding 15 to 24 point lead over Obama. On the Republican side, things are even more muddled. Paul barely registers on most polls, coming in around 1%, while Rudy Giuliani is way out in front. According to MySpace, Giuliani is 5th. YouTube puts him 3rd.
Why the Disconnect?
I think there are probably three potential reasons for the major discrepancy between what web 2.0 anecdotally tells us about the 2008 US election, and what hard polling data actually suggests. The first is age. Though youth turnout surged in the 2004 election, older voters still made up the majority at the polls. Of the 125 million or so votes cast, only 20.9 million were from Americans under 30. Because sites like MySpace and YouTube skew younger (and I mean under 50, not under 35), it could be that a lot of the action candidates see on those sites is from people who aren't likely to actually cast a vote.
The second reason is the cool factor. The candidate du jour you want to buddy up to online isn't necessarily the one people think is the best for the job. In 2004 a famous whimsical poll found that 57% of voters would rather have a beer with George Bush than challenger John Kerry. But Bush didn't win 57% of the vote (he won 51% of the popular vote), and those that voted for him likely didn't do so because they thought he would look better on their MySpace friends list.
The last, and least likely reason, is that the polls themselves are screwed up. Ron Paul's campaign has alleged that his poor polling numbers are a result of pollsters under counting youth voters who only use cell phones (and have no landline for the pollsters to call). Even if this were the case, it's unlikely that the 13% of Americans who don't use a landline would differ in opinion from their traditional phone using brethren enough to swing the polls very much. And as I said in point one: the youth vote -- who account for most of that 13% -- is a small slice of the election pie.
Conclusion
None of this, however, means that the web doesn't matter in politics. Far from it. I still think that the Internet is an important way for candidates to spread their message and connect with voters. Where else but YouTube could Barack Obama get his message out 11 million times for free? There's also no question that the Internet has been a very successful fundraising vehicle for many of these candidates. In the first quarter of this year, Obama's Internet popularity led directly to $6.9 million, compared to Clinton's $4.2 million raised online.
The CNN/YouTube debates and the upcoming MTV/MySpace candidate's forums have been (and presumably will be) great ways for voters to genuinely connect with candidates on issues that matter to them. I believe this form of user generated politics can only be good for the political process in the long run.
Of course, I think it's clear that we shouldn't look at web popularity to predict election outcomes. But no one was really doing that, right? Right?
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I think as people begin to switch off their TV's and "live" online there is no doubt the internet will have a major impact...
And the ways and which people can support their candidate of choice online continues to expand, for example on our site we offer Election 2008 Myspace layouts, so your Myspace profile becomes in effect a living billboard for your candidate.
*Intersting to note Barack Obama is far ahead of other candiates in terms of layout downloads, but still well behind our "Homer Simpson for President" layout.
I'd rather Have Ron Paul than anyone other republican or democrat. What I can't stand is that he has been winning straw polls since Iowa, yet his placing in Iowa wasn't even mentioned on tv.. and I haven't seen any reports of his other straw poll wins. It does make me believe that the mainstream media might be afraid of Paul and the changes he would make.
Everyone else, from Rudy to Obama, are just more puppet government soildiers to me.
This is coming from a 23 year old that is already registered to vote. Younger people are listening, soon the major networks wont be able to push their candidates down our throats.
I don't have a landline and I'm 32. The people I work with are younger and only one has landline. Out of my friends, also in their 30's, only two do. Out of my family, only my parents do, maybe one of my sisters (I only have her cell).
So, I agree the polling is really messed up now. I think the many older and the majority of 30 and under use cells. Maybe its a middle class thing, but I don't think so.
Because of the increasing use of the internet for news and cellphones for primary (and only) phone use, the media will look foolish soon enough.
The youth are going to vote this time around. For Obama and Ron Paul. May the best man win!
Ron Paul R3VOLution!
if you take a look at the new Spartan Internet Political Performance (SIPP) Index Obama is leading all other candidates by over 10% and trending up. http://spartaninternet.com/2008/byParty.asp?tab=2
There's a possible fourth reason for the disconnect - the internet is international. US politics has worldwide implications and so non-US citizens and even non-US residents care about the US election, watch candidate videos on YouTube and befriend them on social networks. However, they don't vote...
That's a very good point, Elad! I'm sure MySpace and YouTube have stats about non-US traffic to candidate pages; it would be really interesting to see what that's like.
The MSM still dominates in terms of how present day voters receive and digest information. The YouTube debates may have seemed ground-breaking, but in the end the questions were selected to jive with the MSM homogenized message. Many contraversial -- or good -- questions never reached the candidates.
The internet needs to dictate the message to be a determining power. So far, MSM packages the internet, not the other way around.
However, I see the MSM losing dominence in the future as tech savvy young voters get around the MSM censoring of the populous message, and are able to see and digest other perspectives.
I see Howard Dean as a candidate who was intentionally marginalized by the MSM. The MSM could have framed his message differently, and completely modified the impression they gave. In the end, only the message from the internet that the MSM allows to be amplified will be heard - until there is a change in how campaigns are financed and managed by the press.
First: Terrible article. Why?
All the focus on MySpace. That's a popular site, but it's "political activism" is non-existent compared to sites like Daily Kos which aren't mentioned in this article. It's fluff.
YouTube demonstrates some of the power of the net but the debates were more of a stunt - to me - than anything else. Sort of like showing a shiny thing to stone age people.
Daily Kos is a place where Democratic Politicians actually write blog entries and interact with activists and constituents. And where they get their butts spanked by "We the People". And this is as it should be.
Democratic Capitulators now 'regret' the FISA Cave-In. is something I wrote recently and that was on the recommended list for about 30 hours. Those who haven't been to Kos or know what it is, go take a look.
This article won't teach you anything about the Web and Politics.
Doc: Was there a "second?" ;)
This post was focused on election politics (and specifically the 2008 election), not politics in general. It was also meant to give a cursory overview of websites that ALL of the candidates actively participate in.
I know many politicians, celebrities, and even some presidential candidates have written for sites like Kos, HuffPo and others... but there is no way to quantify the impact of those contributions, and certainly no way to compare and contrast since it is not something all of the candidates have done.
Hi Josh!
I see your point about "all candidates". Kos is specifically Democratic. I shouldn't have been so harsh.
But Daily Kos is simply synonymous with "election politics". To overlook this is, well, like "missing a spot".
The GOP don't really have anything actually like it. The have talk radio, which has been their power for sending talking points and keeping folks on message.
DKos wielded clear influence in the 2006 elections without a doubt. Jim Webb, even though he let everybody down with his FISA vote, was a true Internet star.
In terms of "quantifying impact" have MySpace users organized to cause a corporation to pull advertising from any news programs? I am not aware because I don't do anything with MySpace, other than set up a page there and delete "Tom" as my "friend". Kossacks and others banded together quickly and got Lowes and Home Depot to ditch advertising on the O'Reilly Factor. That's pretty measurable.
And about the GOP, you are right: its not something that all of them have done and it's an evolutionary task for them. Adapt to the influence of the Internet or take a seat and wait to be phased out.
The GOP's entire lineup is essentially Grumpy Old Men and Ron Paul. Ron's got huge online influence, the rest are just like glued-on chrome accents. The GOP has nothing to offer and that's why it seems so one-sided.
The so-called "debates" are still too much like theater and mud-slinging for my tastes. Too little useful content.
Here's what I would like to see as a primary information resource:
For ANY declared candidate (not just two parties!), give them 20 questions to answer, and give them, say, 2000 words to answer each one. The candidate would be able to supply only one update a month, so they'd have to think carefully about giving a clear message.
The twenty questions would have to be carefully selected, similar to what the League of Women Voters has done for their voting guides.
The whole system would have to be highly secured, to prevent hacking and false submissions. This is too important a resource for too many voters.
Anybody up to the task?
I love this article for bringing a harsh reality to what's really going on. There's a lot of momentum online for candidates like Paul, Gravel, and Kucinch, and it's great to see that people genuinely think they have a chance, but the hurdles they've passed are nothing compared to the biggest one of all. Like you mentioned, only about 16.7% of voters are under 30. A vast majority of the rest really don't use the internet to even find out about those candidates. Senior citizens, probably making up the largest age group on the whole have no idea who Ron Paul is. I've asked a few, and they've never heard of him. Their main source of election news are the 24/7 cable channels, where those candidates get little to no coverage. When channels are already talking "Romney vs. Guliani 08," it's as if they're making the decision for the older voters right there and then. Until candidates like Ron Paul get as much news coverage as current top tiers so they can get their message out, they don't stand a chance.
Obviously big media have already picked their candidates based on what their bosses tell them. Republicans think Giuliani can beat Clinton so the networks love to keep the two up front. After all, the major networks are all controlled from NY, what better candidate to support than the one from your state?
Hopefully the younger generation can tear themselves away from YouTube and Facebook long enough to vote. Otherwise we'll end up with horrid candidates chosen by retirees until voting can be done online. If voting could happen online from a personal computer, I think you'd see a MUCH different American government.
The problem nobody is addressing is that online polls are voluntary. So if you are motivated to get online and vote in a poll for the candidate you support, then the representation of how much popularity that candidate actually has will be skewed. The only reason a land line poll is somewhat more accurate is that the participants are being contacted and searched out by pollsters rather than participants voluntarily divulging their information.
Online polls mean nothing if they are voluntary because then by scientific measures it is not a 'random sample' of the population. Just something to think about.
I think the YouTube numbers above are slightly erroneous. Ron Paul actually has 3.1 million video views while Obama has about 2.7 million according to techpresident.com. Channel views are not the same as pageviews, which is how the table is organized.
Writer is very right in saying that internet is very good tool for candidates to spread their message.
Great article. It's good to see people looking forward like this. I think that if all the young people who act like they care actually voted in the primaries, we'd see some very interesting things start to happen.
The MSM not reporting on so-called 'second tier' candidates is a self-fulfilling prophecy: they are not as popular as the 'major' candidates BECAUSE they aren't covered. And the lack of popularity is justification to not cover them.
This is why the internet is so important. I recently wrote an article calling for a social political website -- a kind of digg for politics. You can read it here if you're interested: http://tinyurl.com/22yodc . Someone has already told me they're going to begin work on creating the site.
These can be revolutionary, exciting times, but we have to make them that way.
@CTM: There actually is a sort of digg for politics, which uses a digg-like system for voting the bias of an article: http://www.sparkmeter.com/
It was recently up for sale, though I'm not sure if it actually sold.
IMO, this is what's important regarding the internet:
I argued that Google, through YouTube especially, has given candidates an extremely cost-effective way to reach millions of potential voters.
The internet should greatly reduce the cost for candidates to get their message out. Instead of these candidates spending millions on ads, they should concentrate on policy discussions. In my name field I linked an example of intelligent policy discussions in a blog format. I hope we'll eventually get candidate bloggers who'll do real policy discussions on their blogs.
The big difference between the Internet and the rest of mass media is that the Internet is less censored and less controlled than the TV, newspapers, and radio stations that are owned by only 5 corporations, all of which sponsor their favorite candidate that they paid off. These 5 corporations are owned by defense contractors (like GE, etc) ad refuse to give proportional coverage of candidates that do not stand for their ideals (like more war, no health care, less education, etc). The Internet and many amjor sites are also controlled by these corporations, but there is enough freedom available that allows the true voice of the majority to come out and stand for their candidates and the issues they stand for. Both Dennis K. and Ron Paul win off the Internet straw polls, but its never discussed by the mass media.
Don't forget Obama's Twitter profile: http://twitter.com/BarackObama.
Microblogging (twitter, Jaiku, Pownce) is a leading way to keep in touch with voters. It's where SMS, IM, email, www and blogging come together. http://www.bizcommunity.com/Article/196/18/17234.html
I agree with some of the points made about the metrics: this is not the US voting public. A lot of users in the world deperately want/need the US to change its policies and are following the campaigns, or lending their online presences to candidates they hope will bring about meaningful change.
Miniclip.com's online election pole (Hip Hop debate) accurately predicted the 2004 USA election results within 2 percentage points and was the largest online pole for that election with 4 million votes.
You're forgetting that online people are overall better educated and better informed than the washless masses that reside solely in TV land.
Hi, Josh. Why don't you read this article from TechPresident before you trust theat channel view metric.
YouTube Gets Pwned: Obama's Numbers Don't Add Up
By Joshua Levy, 03/27/2007 - 5:45pm
http://techpresident.com/node/193
One of the comments made in the article is that only 13% of people don't have landlines, so only 13% of people can't participate in polls, and that's not enough people to skew the results of the polls to match online indications.
There is an important point here, and it's that not only do you need to have a landline, but you need to have a listed phone number. While only 13% may not have a landline, more than 50% of residential numbers are unlisted. Personally, I know of very few people that have listed numbers, and they're all over 60 years of age.
@Geoff,
You say that the online polls are not scientific because they're voluntary and not a random sampling line random phone polls are. That would also mean that the general election is not scientific, since it is voluntary and not a random sampling. If you're concerned with determining what people think of candidates, then random sampling is a good way to go. But if you're goal is to predict the results of an election, then your poll should be as much like an election as possible -- voluntary.
It's great to have an article like this bringing attention to the ever growing impact of the Internet on key aspects of our electoral process.
However, the headline is a bit misleading. The headline would be more accurate, if it read, the Social Networking Election, and not Web 2.0 Election.
In some ways, I know you're thinking, this guy is arguing semantics, but it is deeper than that. Web 2.0 is about moving true functionality out to the "edges," throughout the web, like Google Maps and Google Ads.
Web 2.0 is not social networking. They are linked in many ways, but they are not the same thing.
What I am seeing in the straw polls that require people to actually get out from in front of their computers and televisions and drive long distances to vote, is that the internet polling seems to be MUCH MORE accurate than the MSM's polling. (At least with the GOP, I don't follow the dems with any real enthusiasm.) These are obviously the people who will take the time to vote in their primaries and/or general elections, so perhaps the issue shouldn't be the gap between MSM and internet polls, but MSM and the American people.