How is the Internet Affecting the US Election?

Voters are influenced by information and thus the mass media influences the outcome of elections. The Internet is already the most powerful of all media, but the political world hasn’t yet learned how to use it to best effect. Nevertheless, there are indications that this is changing, as the Internet gradually becomes the prime source of news and opinion for more and more people.

“Get the Support of the Shepherds and the Sheep Will Follow.”

That’s the goal of political operators, honest or otherwise. Politics is mostly marketing and the Internet is a marketing channel, just like radio, television and the printed news. However it is also an organizational channel, which the other media are not. There are shepherds in both areas; organizers (of funding and direct action) and opinion leaders.

Bearing that in mind, here’s a brief summary of the Internet’s impact on the US Election so far:

The Demise of Rudolph Giuliani. I don’t believe that Giuliani took any note at all of the Internet, beyond having the requisite web site and posting political adverts to YouTube. He was the front runner for the GOP for many months and hence should have had the ability to drive the agenda and gather cash contributions using the Internet where appropriate, better than any other candidate. What happened was that Giuliani’s enemies made better use of the Internet than he did. If you search YouTube for “Guiliani”, the most popular videos (apart from a pro-Obama video, Obama Girl v Giuliani Girl) are Giuliani in Drag Smooching Donald Trump (609,779 views) and Giuliani Gets Exposed As Fraud by Firefighters (401,071 views) neither of which would be likely to win votes. Quite a few negative stories were circulating about Giuliani on the web and went largely unchallenged.

The Phenomenon of Ron Paul. Texas Congressman, Ron Paul was, and still is, streets ahead of Guiliani and McCain and any other GOP candidate in exploitation of the Internet. There was a large organized web campaign to draw attention to his candidacy, which ensured that whenever any web site ran a poll of GOP candidates, he’d come out top - even though he never registered strongly in any such national poll. In the final quarter of last year he raised a far greater pile of money ($17,487,711) from donors than John McCain, accumulating a total of $28,101,264 for 2007. Naturally, he outdid his GOP opponents on YouTube. The most popular Ron Paul AD attracted over 5,697,000 views on YouTube. There were also a couple of other Ron Paul ads that got over 1,000,000 views.

While all of this did not translate into primary votes to the extent that Ron Paul supporters hoped, you have to bear in mind that Ron Paul had much lower name recognition than most of the other GOP candidates.

John McCain. The most popular YouTube video of John McCain is an antiwar mashup created by Will.i.am, which has had 1,096,000 views. While there are some positive YouTube clips starring McCain, including one where a questioner asks “How do we beat the bitch”, on balance most McCain clips are negative. It’s pretty clear that John McCain, who could conceivably win the presidential election, has no feel for the Internet. It will be a disadvantage and he will not get the youth vote.

Hillary Clinton. The negative video clips for Hillary Clinton on YouTube far outweigh the negatives for even Giuliani. The widely seen (4,574,000 views) Vote Different clip is actually an Obama ad, but the Shocking Video Hillary Does NOT Want You To See! is strongly negative and has been viewed over 1,536,486 times. Hillary has done her best to leverage the web, she put up a MySpace page, and advertised it with a video that was widely viewed, and the Clintons did their Sopranos parody (viewed by 447,000). But if you surf the political sites you quickly get the impression that the Internet is Obama territory. It’s mostly Clinton negative.

Barak Obama. If you just look at YouTube, the support for Obama is so far ahead of any other candidate that you feel sorry for the rest of the field. Here’s a list of videos and view counts; “I Got a Crush…On Obama” By Obama Girl (6,291,425), Vote Different (4,574,242), Yes We Can - Barack Obama Music Video (4,184,015), Sexy! Flashy! Wonky! Super Obama Girl (2,396,397), Debate ‘08: Obama Girl vs Giuliani Girl (2,111,830), Obama Girl Returns for Iowa! (Why Obama Won) (1,886,390), Barack Obama’s response to Bush’s final State of the Union (1,237,327), FOX ATTACKS OBAMA (1,039,535). This list of 9 is just those that got more than a million views. There are no other candidates that achieve anywhere close to such viewing figures for positive video clips. Note also that the Obama Girl videos have become a series.

The weight in Obama’s favor is dramatic. It helps his campaign to raise cash, giving Obama a huge advantage over every other candidate of either party. There also seems to be a set of activists, who are permanently on guard to deal with rumors that are Obama-negative - such as the one FOX News gave air time to, which suggested that, as a child, Obama went to a secular “madrassa” in Indonesia. (There is, of course, no such thing as a secular madrassa - a madrassa being, by definition, a non-secular school).

It is interesting to note the current argument that is raging within the Democratic party, in an attempt by the two remaining candidates to fix the final outcome. On one hand the Clinton camp is arguing that the Florida and Michigan delegates should be seated. “Unfair” cries the Obama camp “that’s changing the rules”. (Florida and Michigan having been officially unseated, because they violated Democratic party rules). Quite right, but the Obama camp is arguing that the superdelegates should be mandated to vote the way that there districts voted. There is nothing in the rules that suggests any mandate of that kind applying to superdelegates. If you go by the noise level about this on the web, you’d conclude that the Obama camp is right on both points.

But logically, it can’t be so.

No matter. When the vote is over and done, I suspect there will be an in-depth analysis done of the Obama campaign’s use of the web. It’s very impressive and it may lead all the way to the White House.