The 2008 "Internet" Elections

How important will internet marketing be for candidates during the primaries and general elections? Can a candidate win at the polls without ‘a win’ on the web?

It was just over a year ago, while blogging on Forbes.com about the 2008 elections, that I first heard the name Barack O’bama and the words presidential candidate in the same sentence. At the time I thought wait, who the heck is Barack O’bama? I did some web research and found that he was a junior senator who hadn’t even served two years and yet there were more internet sites devoted to ‘O’bama for President’ than I ever would have expected for an unknown political player with no real congressional achievements.

So how did an unknown junior senator suddenly spring to the forefront of politics during the race for the presidential seat? Genius Marketing and smart [aggressive] use of the internet.

Over the last year we’ve seen campaign trails sprout a number of candidate sponsored YouTube ads, one-on-one candidate forums on MySpace and MTV, candidate profiles on Facebook, campaign stop-shops in Second Life’s virtual world, and now voter submitted YouTube questions seem to be driving the contexts of presidential debate forums.

A year ago I might have said that successful internet marketing was a supportive factor to building awareness but not "the" factor for winning at the polls (think Howard Dean). Today, it's half the battleground.

Six months ago Barack O’bama and Ron Paul both had laughable leads over all other candidates in their number of MySpace friends and YouTube channel views. And yet all the polling data concluded that neither Paul nor O’bama were front-runner candidates for their respective parties. In fact Paul barely registered on any poll. Flash-forward to recent weeks where O’bama (the candidate who’s harnessed the internet most effectively and most aggressively) is a serious contender for the democratic nomination with Clinton recently losing significant lead points to O’bama in several key swing states. And while Ron Paul is still in the bottom percentages of republican polls - his candidacy and general popular support has definitely gained spotlight attention and he’s risen quite quickly in just the last few months alone.

I don’t know if the web is the new ‘campaign battleground’ but I do know two things: 1) the democrats are harnessing the internet far more effectively as a campaign tool and 2) younger-generation voters are watching far more political YouTube clips than they are televised debates. At the end of the day, candidates who do not aggressively tackle the internet arena will be doing a serious disservice to their campaign strategy and their overall chances for winning the top seat.

** Hint, hint Republicans….**

On election-day eventually it might even come down to "vote for your candidate at the polls...OR vote online at myvote.com"