Well, here we are. Today is the day. Voters all over the country are making their way to the booths, each to put their own little nail in the coffin of this presidential race that has seemingly been going on for an eternity. This has been the most captivating race I have seen in my lifetime, and many say that this is one of the most important elections the U.S. has ever seen.
Who will emerge victorious? Will it be Bob Barr? Will it be John McCain? Will it be Barack Obama? Will it be Ralph Nader? How about Chuck Baldwin or Cynthia McKinney? With all due respect to the other candidates, I think it’s pretty safe to say that two of the names mentioned above will be the ones on most minds across America.
The Internet has played a very large role in this election, from campaigning and coverage, to conversation and tools for information. And let’s not leave out the comic relief. So let’s take a look at how the Internet has shaped this presidential race.
MARKETING POLITICS
There’s no question that the Internet has provided an unparalleled medium for marketing the McCain and Obama campaigns. For one, anyone who is interested can easily go to JohnMcCain.com or BarackObama.com and see what the candidates want them to see. For those who don’t know the URLs, a simple Google search for either candidate’s name will bring you their official website at the top of the results.
SEO
Even Search Engine Optimization has played a role in this race. Way back in January, Michael Jensen took a look at how the candidates were doing in terms of SEO. He looked at backlinks, Technorati links, Alexa rank, page strength, indexed pages, PPC branding, and IndexRank.
Abby Johnson touches upon SEO and Internet Marketing tactics with a woman who marketed for the Mitt Romney campaign in this video.
Press Releases
I don’t know what percentage of releases come directly from the McCain and Obama campaigns, but a search for either candidate’s name on press release distribution sites like PR Newswire or BusinessWire, will turn up a plethora of results of people telling us why each candidate is good for the job as well as why each is bad.
Online Advertising
Then of course there’s good old fashioned advertising. Display ads for both Barack Obama and John McCain are plastered all around the web. Some straight from the campaigns, some from third-parties looking to cash in on clicks from the candidates’ celebrity just as they would use Eminem or Paris Hilton.
When you’re advertising on the Internet though, you can’t leave out search engine advertising, and the McCain and Obama campaigns are well aware of this. Valleywag has an interesting look at the keywords each have purchased on Google.
Testimonials
Nothing beats some good word-of-mouth, especially if it’s coming from CEOs and other high profile executives. You’ve got Google CEO Eric Schmidt and Vint Cert (“Father of the Internet”) endorsing Obama while eBay’s former President and CEO Meg Whitman as well as former Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina have been known McCain supporters (depite recent stories of issues there) . Schmidt even appeared in a recent Obama infomercial that aired on national television, and Fiorina has been said to be an economic advisor to McCain.
GETTING THE NEWS
The Internet hasn’t just provided the candidates and their campaigns a huge medium to market themselves. It has also opened up a whole world of information and discussion for voters. It has changed the way many people get their information, and perhaps most importantly, gives them a much broader range of choices to obtain that information from, than was available during presidential races of the past.
Clearly, not all of that information is reliable, accurate, or helpful, and the debate over new media as a legitimate source of information continues to go on, but there is no denying that there are more options than there have ever been, and people can use their own minds to decide where to get their info from.
News Sites
Of course there are still the good old fashioned news sources – CNN, the Times, NBC, ABC, FOX, CBS, NewsWeek, etc. People have turned to the Internet versions of these entities more and more often. Some print publications are even abandoning their print businesses in favor of the web. News search and aggregation sites are also there to provide readers with results from these publications based on the topics they want to read about.
Blogs
Blogs (and their RSS feeds) have provided the ability to give anyone a voice who wants one. Many readers are turning to these to get news and commentary on issues involving the candidates. Another draw to this medium is the commentary that the readers themselves can contribute via blog comments. This provides plenty of room for open debate, and this is a strategy that even many of the more traditional news sources have adopted. This also brings me to the next item.
Community
Community has never played a bigger role in a presidential election, and that is because of the open forum for debate at every turn (we’ve certainly had our fair share in comments on Murdok articles). The Internet has made the whole process more of an open discussion thanks to the community mentality provided by blogs and social media.
Special Election Pages
Nearly all of the most popular content and social sites on the Internet have pages dedicated to the continuing coverage of the election.
– Google
– Yahoo
– MSN
– YouTube
– MySpace
– Facebook
– Twitter
– Digg
– AOL
– Topix
I’m sure there are many others.
Online Video
Not only do people have more content to read than ever before courtesy of the above media, but they also have more to watch. This becomes truer everyday, because online video has really only recently started coming into its own. Many are watching less television and more online video.
They’re going to YouTube where they can find videos pieced together to smear Obama, or others to do the same to McCain. They’re going to Hulu to watch debates and rallies, and of course parodies from SNL, and political-based comedy shows like The Daily Show. They’re going to news sites to watch more traditional coverage. They’re going to combinations of these places for combinations of content and lots of other places too, and more often than not, these videos can be embedded into any site or social media profile and linked to and shared, making them available so many places.
A number of “A-List” celebrities have even gotten together to release a couple of public service announcement videos encouraging people to go out and vote. Controversial political filmmaker Michael Moore even released his latest offering on the Internet for free.
TOOLS
Some companies have released election-based tools to help keep people informed about a variety of aspects related to the election. For example, AOL offers a toolbar for IE and Firefox that provides recent news headlines and allows for customization and the addition of widgets, feeds, and buttons.
Google offers a site based on Google Maps that allows users to search for their home address at which point they are provided with information about how they can vote, including (perhaps most importantly) where they are supposed to vote. There’s no telling how many people this tool alone has inspired to go out and cast their ballots. Google also has a gadget based on this tool, and another similar mobile tool meant for volunteers to help recruit voters and show them where to vote.
Google in fact has been all over this presidential race. Apart from the above tools and Obama endorsements. They have been involved in a project to help kids ask the candidates questions, provided other election-related gadgets, and created a Google News feature (in Google Labs) that allows users to search for subjects and retrieve quotes from the candidates regarding them.
I would imagine there are many other tools out there that people have been using to obtain voting/election-related information. These are just a few that come immediately to mind.
THE DAY IS HERE!
Now here we are. Getting ready to step into the voting booths. Let’s reflect on this past year of presidential campaigning. How much have we used the Internet to shape our opinions and our decisions? When you’re in the booth, will you reflect upon all of the commentary you have read? All of the discussion you’ve participated in? All of the video footage you’ve seen? All of the ads?
Probably not. I’m guessing you already know who you’re voting for. But if you’re reading this, I bet the Internet played some kind of a role in how you reached that decision. We’ll see where the chips fall tonight.
