Wednesday, November 10, 2010
As candidates learned from the success of the Obama campaign's online efforts two years ago, the successful campaigns in the 2010 election cycle ensured that social media played a big role in their outreach to voters. And this time it wasn't a surprise to anyone.
More than Democrats, Republican candidates learned the lessons of 2008 and built a strong social machine that was put in action in many races across the country. Congressional Republicans have been
out-tweeting their colleagues for months now and Republican candidates had more than
twice the number of fans on Facebook as their opponents.
The question is how well these "likes" led to real-life votes, and the numbers are astounding. According to
Facebook's Politics page, the candidate with the most fans won in 74 percent of key House races and over 80 percent of Senate races. This is an impressive showing that candidates will not ignore in future cycles.
Candidates who embraced social media, it seems, were more effective in directly engaging with potential voters and with the mainstream media. And this election cycle showed that, as a reporter, covering candidates in today's media environment means covering their social media channels. In many cases, candidates used social media — not press releases — to make important announcements and to break news.
In addition, the public is using social media to share political perspectives, expressing their views before, during and after voting. For example, polls continually had Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid from Nevada losing to Sharron Angle leading up to the election. However, conversation on social media said otherwise. According to an
analysis by Crimson Hexagon, Reid had a comfortable lead on Angle of 55 percent to 45 percent. Reid's victory demonstrated the predicative power of social media.
It's too early to predict the balance of power in 2012. But we can say for certain that candidates will continue to become increasingly sophisticated at reaching voters in unique ways through social media, and campaigns will keep getting smarter at analyzing the vast amounts of data at their fingertips.
Now that's something you can tweet home about.