Social Networking New Political Power Tool
December 01, 2009The McCarville Report Online
If Barack Obama proved anything in his successful 2008 presidential race, it was that Internet savvy candidates can harness its power to enlist supporters and motivate them to act by registering to vote, donating money, volunteering and being reminded to vote on election day.
In the past few election cycles, the Internet has exploded as a campaign tool and the popularity of today's social networking sites is taking that explosion to new heights just as the Obama campaign did.
In Oklahoma, candidates have latched onto the signficance of the social networks to further their campaigns and there's new evidence of that in the polls on The McCarville Report Online.
One poll asks Facebook users if they follow candidates in the 5th District congressional and if so, which one. We asked a similiar question in the race for governor. We gave no pre-poll notice to any candidates; we just put the polls up and watched. Within a few minutes, the poll numbers began to climb as word spread on the networking site.
In the 5th District poll, a candidate with virtually no political name identification but with the largest Facebook following (10,000+!) of any candidate so far this year, James Lankford, rocketed to the lead by a huge margin as his Facebook followers voted for him.
In the governor's race poll, supporters of Randy Brogdon and Mary Fallin were quick to respond and the end result was, essentially, a standoff.
In just a few hours, more than 700 Facebook users responded to our polls. Now, we're asking those users who follow their candidates on Twitter to respond in a new poll, posted on the right side of this page.
The point of our polls is to measure the power of the campaigns to motivate their followers to take action. If the results of the Facebook poll (and, we suspect, the Twitter poll as well) are any indication, 2010 could be a very interesting election year and in the primaries, "conventional" perceptions of the races could miss the significance of the social networks.
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