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The Use of the Internet and New Media in Presidential Campaigns

Christopher M. Mascaro
The Johns Hopkins University
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The Use of the Internet and New Media in Presidential Campaigns

Presidential candidates have employed state of the art communications technology to

mobilize individuals and disseminate information dating all the way back to the first elections.

The elections of the Internet age are no different. Candidates are using the Internet in innovative

ways to appeal to voters and raise money. Many of these innovative techniques have permitted

lesser-known candidates to become recognized on the national political scene and challenge the

political status quo.

The most prominent examples of the use of innovative technology in recent Presidential

elections include Howard Dean in 2004 along with Ron Paul and Barack Obama in 2008.

Howard Dean can be considered one of the first candidates to use the Internet successfully on a

national scale to build a personal brand. Ron Paul’s bid for the 2008 Republican nomination

relied on the Internet, because he lacked support among the Republican base. Barack Obama

would have had a near impossible chance at beating Hillary Clinton for the Democratic

nomination had it not been for the existence of the Internet and his innovative new media

strategy1. The use of the Internet and new technology has allowed Presidential candidates to

emerge onto the national political scene and become competitive in Presidential primaries and

general elections.

The paper will begin with a brief discussion of political candidates and mobilization

focusing on the various manners in which candidates mobilize support. Second, a history of the

temporal use of new technologies in Presidential campaigns, starting with print media, through

the development of radio and TV all the way up to the Internet will be presented. Next, a brief

1
In the paper, the terms new media and participatory media relate to the use of blogs, social
networks and other Internet based media that depends on user generated content as opposed to
traditional media outlets where the communication is one-way.
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history of the use of Internet in political campaigns will be presented. From there, the paper will

explore the Presidential campaigns of 2004 and 2008 and how Howard Dean, Ron Paul and

Barack Obama used the Internet. Finally, Barack Obama’s election to the White House will be

discussed with a focus on how he was more effective than Paul and Dean and what this could

mean for the Obama administration2.

Mobilizing Support over the Years

The need for political candidates to mobilize support is fundamental to any successful

election attempt. The manner in which candidates mobilize their supporters and attempt to garner

more support is the subject of widespread academic research. Even though candidates choose to

mobilize supporters in different ways the basics of mobilization are all the same. These basic

principles include candidates going out on the campaign trail to garner name recognition,

delivering their message to the constituents and establishing their stances on policy issues. The

different ways that candidates mobilize support leads to success or failure in the election.

The fact that voting in the United States is a two-stage process often times makes

mobilization even more difficult. The electorate must effectively go to the polls twice, once to

register and then again to vote. One of the issues with registration, especially for new voters is

that it comes during a time when the excitement of the election may not be present (Jackson

1996). In many states, voters must be registered 30 days before election day and at that time

people are then locked into being able or unable to vote on election day3. Therefore, it is

2
Volumes could be written on how Obama used new media to defeat Hillary Clinton and John
McCain, but the focus of this paper will be on how Obama was successful relative to prior
individuals that used new media and new technology of the Internet as a large part of their
campaign.
3
Though it is important to mention that some states are moving away from this registration
model and allowing same day registration and voting, it is not widespread enough to warrant any
general study of the effects of it on a national scale.
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important for politicians to try to mobilize support well before election day. The long

Democratic primary season of 2008 offered a unique set of circumstances that found many

individuals registering for their state primaries and in turn being registered for the November

election generating significant turnout.

One of the biggest questions facing those studying mobilization and voter turnout is

determining who gets mobilized or contacted by the political campaigns. Goldstein and Ridout

argue that those individuals most likely to be contacted by traditional mobilization techniques

such as phone calls or direct mail tend to be those that have voted in the past or are already most

likely to vote (2002). Holbrook and McClurg similarly argue that “partisans” or those strongly

affiliated to a party are the ones most likely to be exposed to campaign information and

mobilization attempts (2005). These strategies may not be the most effective.

A successful campaign is one that is able to translate campaign exposure into votes on

Election Day, but many times these individuals are ones that would have voted with the party

anyway. Therefore, very few new voters are being exposed to campaign information and in turn

are forced to seek information out for themselves. These new voters are the ones that may not be

included in traditional mobilization techniques and often times are the ones that need the

information or encouragement to get out to the polls. Overall, traditional mobilization techniques

are essentially a waste of money on the scale that they are carried out, because they are targeting

those with the least need for the information. This problem has now been solved as new

technology makes information dissemination to a widespread audience easier and cheaper.

Technology that is able to reach a large amount of people at once has been used for years in

Presidential Elections and the pioneers of using new technology throughout the years have been

able to turn mobilization into success.

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“Technology” through the Years

The use of new technology in Presidential elections goes back centuries. The efficiency

of the printing press helped Andrew Jackson form and organize the Democratic Party leading up

to the Presidential election of 1828. Jackson then used the postal service to distribute fliers

detailing his biographical information painting him as a hero in the war of 1812. After his

election, he turned the Postmaster general position into a patronage position and greatly

expanded the reach of the Post Office understanding how important it was for communication

(Ambinder 2008).

Abraham Lincoln also benefited from new technology of the day when transcripts of his

debates with Douglas were reprinted in newspapers that had just become nationally distributed.

The use of the print media helped Lincoln, a physically unattractive individual, gain national

celebrity status (Ambinder 2008). Franklin Delano Roosevelt used his radio “fireside chats” to

appeal directly to the American people and help them form a connection with him. These “chats”

helped FDR garner more support from the American people for the New Deal (Ambinder 2008).

In the middle of the 20th century Estes Kefauver used television to boost his political

prospects and become a household name. In 1950, sensing the growing organized crime problem

facing the United States, the Senate established the Special Committee to Investigate Organized

Crime in Interstate Commerce, choosing Freshmen Democratic Senator Kefauver from

Tennessee to serve as its chair. The committee traveled to 14 cities in 15 months, broadcasting

the proceedings on television during a time when Americans were first buying them. This

enabled Kefauver to gain name recognition, boosting him to national prominence and allowing

him a bid for the 1952 nomination (United States Senate 1950).
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The popularity of Senator Kefauver allowed him to defeat President Harry S. Truman in

the New Hampshire primary. Kefauver then went on to win 14 of the 17 primaries, but failed to

win the Democratic nomination, because the nomination in 1952 was mostly decided by the

outcomes of state conventions not primaries, limiting the general public’s influence (Brown

1998). The use of television by Kefauver to broadcast the hearings made him a household name,

turning an unknown freshmen Senator into a national figure. Though much of his momentum

may have been driven by the TV exposure, this case is analogous to what is happening with the

Internet today.

The Internet in Elections

The first major use of the Internet in elections and campaigns began in 1996, when the

Internet first became available to the masses. In 1996, most candidate websites were merely a

virtual campaign brochure with basic information about the candidate and limited information

about their stances on policy issues (Dulio et al. 1999). It was not until the 1998 election cycle

that candidates started to realize the power of the Internet and began to develop strategies to

succeed online.

In 1998, more than two-thirds of candidates for Congressional seats had websites. Of

these websites, more than 70 percent of the candidates used the websites to perform some sort of

fundraising activity. These activities ranged from providing visitors with information on how to

donate to allowing them to make credit card donations on the website (Dulio et al. 1999). The

year of 1998 marked the emergence of the Internet to reach out to Internet users. In 1998, Jesse

Ventura used e-mail to attract supporters for his bid for the Minnesota Governor seat (Napoli

2003). The ability for individuals to donate online did not necessarily illustrate a quick shift to

online donations, but it was a step in the right direction.

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In the 1998 race for the California Senate Seat, less than 1 percent of all campaign

donations were made online (Dulio et al. 1999). This figure is very limited in contrast to the

hundreds of millions of dollars being raised online today, but illustrated the future of

campaigning on the Internet. Even though most candidates in major elections had a website in

1998, the benefits of having an online presence were not realized because Internet access was not

as ubiquitous as today. As Internet access entered more homes in the early 21st century,

candidates realized the need to develop a more attractive web presence. The elections of 2000

were the first major election cycle where the Internet played a significant role. In 2000,

Republican presidential primary candidate John McCain raised more than $5 million online

(Napoli 2003).

The wide proliferation of the Internet meant that people were turning to the Internet for

political information. During the 1998 and 2000 election seasons a question was posed to

potential voters asking them what they used as their primary media source for election

information. From 1998 to 2000, the amount of respondents indicating that they used newspapers

as their primary source dropped by 14 percent while the number claiming they used the Internet

increased by about the same percentage (Lupia 2003). This statistic made it clear that there was a

shift to the Internet for political information. This phenomenon would be evident in the 2008

election as preliminary reports indicated that 46 percent of Americans used the Internet to get

election news during the primary season (Smith and Rainie 2008).

The use of the Internet in Presidential campaigns was to be expected in the 2004

elections, but the Internet had changed significantly since the previous election. This called for a

shift in strategy from campaigns. Prior campaigns had focused on the use of static web pages, the

equivalent of advertising billboards and small virtual “tip jars” for fundraising. From 2000-2004,
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the Internet began its transformation from static content to dynamic content and the emergence

of new or participatory media.

Howard Dean – The Pioneer

Howard Dean is one of the first candidates to harness the power of this emerging

technology, as is evident by his use of the Internet for fundraising and the website meetup.com to

mobilize voters. In January 2003, Howard Dean had less than $200,000 in the bank and only

seven staff members (Anderson 2004). Up to that point, Dean’s political career had been in

Vermont state politics including serving a Governor for nearly a decade. The moment that

catapulted Dean onto the national scene was a speech he gave at the California Democratic

National Convention in 2003. In this speech, Dean questioned and challenged the Democratic

Party for its current state (Dean 2003). This speech helped him find favor with grassroots

organizations and other activists that shared his views; the very individuals that would be his

base.

After the speech, Dean’s support grew and he became the apparent front-runner through

most of the pre-primary season until an unexpected loss in the 2004 Iowa caucus. The fact that

Dean was the apparent front-runner and then lost the first primary is what is most notable. How

could Dean go from being the front-runner to losing? Dean did not commit any serious blunders

to that point; the answer is in how Dean actually mobilized his support4.

Howard Dean became a national figure in American politics, because of the use of the

website meetup.com and blogging. Dean was successful in utilizing meetup.com to help

mobilize voters and translate the mobilization into momentum and fundraising. The purpose of

the website meetup.com is to allow groups of people with similar interests find each other and

4
The “Dean Scream” is outside the scope of the paper, because it happened as a result of his loss
in Iowa and not in the time leading up to it.
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then “meetup” offline. Once they “meetup” the individuals then talk about the interest or partake

in some activity. Dean included a link on his website to meetup.com and encouraged people to

join and find local groups to attend (Sosnik 2006, 164). Along with this link on the website,

Dean maintained a blog where 26 percent of the postings talked about fundraising and appealing

to the public to donate to his campaign (Williams et al. 2005, 181).

In June 2003, 7 months before the first primary contest, Howard Dean had 259 Dean for

President Meetups occurring in 239 cities in the US (Sosnik 2006, 164). People would go to

meetup.com, sign up for a local meetup with their email address, and then attend the meeting.

After they attended the meetup many would donate in person or online. Over the summer and

into the winter, Dean developed his grassroots base by using meetup.com and converting the

numbers that were signing up for the site into fundraising. One of the keys to Dean’s strategy

was the fact that he was able to maintain constant communication with supporters by email and

through meetup.com, though he was not able to reach past his core supporters.

By the time Dean formally ended his campaign in late February 2004, he had amassed

640,937 supporters on meetup.com, with estimates of about 75,000 actually attending one of the

meetups. Starting with only $200,000 in the bank, Dean managed to raise $40 million in one

year, $30 million of which was donated online. This was due in large part to his online prowess

and ability to get individuals to “meetup” 5(Dean nets $15 million). The reason that Howard

Dean failed is complex. For one, Dean turned out to be a weak candidate, but that would have

come out early in the process, right? Not necessarily. Reasons for the failure will be given in

later sections, but it comes down to the artificial momentum that Dean was able to generate by

using new media sites like meetup.com. He never was a strong candidate because he did not have

5
It is important to note that Howard Dean did have a social networking portion of his website
called DeanLink, but very little success came of it, so it is left out of the paper.
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widespread appeal, but the use of social media helped him appear as though he did, even though

he was only mobilizing his core supporters. The one thing that was apparent was that Dean’s

strategy would be built upon in the 2008 Presidential election.

Ron Paul – Building on Dean’s Success

The 2008 election saw the emergence of Ron Paul and Barack Obama. Ron Paul is an

interesting candidate by many accounts. He had been the Libertarian candidate for President in

1988 garnering less than .5 percent of the national vote (Spiegal 2007). Paul was eventually

elected to represent the 14th District of Texas in the House of Representatives for the term

starting in 1997. Similar to Dean, Paul had little national mainstream exposure, but knew that the

Internet was going to be the best avenue for exposure, mobilization, and fundraising.

In March 2007, Paul formally declared his bid for the GOP nomination on C-SPAN (C-

SPAN). One of the attractions to Paul was his conservative platform that called for a return to the

gold standard, abolition of the I.R.S., a literal view of the constitution and smaller government

(Seelye and Wayne 2007). These non-traditional beliefs helped him gain appeal among the mass

public and the younger progressive demographic. With this message and understanding of where

his support would come from, Ron Paul took to the Internet.

As a contrast to Dean, Ron Paul had many more avenues for dissemination of

information on the Internet. Like Dean, Paul used meetup.com with well over 1,000 groups that

supported him (Seelye and Wayne 2007). Paul also had a blog updated by staffers that would

give an update on various campaign happenings. At one point in 2007, “Ron Paul” was the most

searched for term on the blog indexing website technorati.com (Wilson 2007). This helps

illustrate the success of Ron Paul harnessing the Internet to get his name out in an attempt to

build support.
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Paul used the video sharing website youtube.com to release campaign information and

videos promoting him because he did not have the same access to the media that other candidates

had early in the electoral process. Paul was actually the only GOP primary candidate excluded

from a FOXNews debate, but because of his access to new medium he was still able to get his

message out (Top of the Ticket Blog). The YouTube channel, “RonPaul2008dotcom” had over

50,000 subscribers and had well over 7 million views of the videos on the channel. The content

of these videos ranged from traditional campaign ads to an interview with James Kotecki in a

dorm room (Hoffman 2008).

Ron Paul also harnessed the power of new media such as social networks, especially

Facebook and MySpace. On Facebook, Paul had amassed over 100,000 supporters and thousands

of posts on his wall by the time he ended his campaign in June 2008. An illustration of the

success of his online strategy is evident in the fact that Ron Paul was actually chosen as a winner

along with Barack Obama in a mock “MySpace” primary in January 2008 (McCarthy 2008).

These social networks allowed Ron Paul to connect with users offering them a place to

congregate and share messages online and connect with supporters by posting information and

pictures from the campaign trail.

The success of Paul’s use of the Internet to fundraise and mobilize support did not

translate into real votes for the candidate, but he was able to raise a large sum of money. On

November 5, 2007, the “Ron Paul Money Bomb” campaign netted Paul $4.2 million in 24 hours

(Hoffman 2008). The reasons for Paul’s failure in the actual campaign will be analyzed in later

sections in comparison to Dean and Obama, but it is now important to look at a successful

campaign that used the Internet heavily.

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Barack Obama and the 2008 Election

Barack Obama gained national attention after his 2004 Democratic National Convention

speech. Being a relative newcomer to the national political landscape when the 2008 Presidential

primary season got underway, Obama realized that he would need to be innovative to mobilize

support. Part of this innovation was realizing the need to target a different set of fundraisers,

because his competition for the Democratic nomination was from the entrenched Democratic

elite who would lock down traditional fundraising mechanisms.

Early in his Presidential campaign Obama asked Mark Gorenberg to join his national

finance committee, to help him target the Silicon Valley market – the home of emerging

technology. Mark Gorenberg was a Silicon Valley veteran who had done fundraising for John

Kerry in 2004 and therefore had political experience (Green 2008). Though Gorenberg was using

a new medium to raise money and get information out, he was dealing with antiquated political

entities. Until 2004, the Internet had mostly been used by candidates to distribute the typical

campaign brochure. That changed in 2008, giving Gorenberg a great opportunity (Green 2008).

When Gorenberg joined Obama’s national finance committee, “he was pleased to

discover an institutional culture eager to embrace new ideas about building user-generated

networks (Green 2008).” This shift in culture and Obama’s status as a relative long shot early on

in the campaign meant that the campaign had little to lose. Therefore, the campaign had the

ability for the campaign to utilize innovative techniques. By using the Internet, the Obama

campaign was able to reach a larger audience, many of which had not participated in the political

fundraising process in the past (Green 2008). These individuals, like those Paul and Dean were

appealing to, were a virtually untapped resource.

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Green also notes that the campaign culture made the Obama campaign a natural fit for

Mark Spinner, a media executive and entrepreneur. Mark Spinner had only been active in politics

a short time, but after going to an Obama fundraiser in February 2006 he got involved. Following

the fundraiser, Spinner reached out to his “friends” on the social networking sites LinkedIN,

Facebook and MySpace, looking for individuals that would be interested in donating money to

the campaign (Green 2008).

In order to augment the already existing social networks to help raise money and

mobilize support for Obama, Spinner created an online affinity group called “Entrepreneurs for

Obama.” In May 2006, Obama appeared by videoconference to this group (Green 2008). This

affinity group was the precursor to what became the foundation of Obama’s new media success

and foundation of his online momentum, the website My.BarackObama.com.

My.BarackObama.com allowed users to join and take an active role in the campaign. At

the heart of the website was a social network where individuals could link up with other

supporters and share ideas. A user can also create groups and attract other individuals to support

Obama. The website also allowed individuals to get a list of phone numbers to call to help enlist

support for Obama (Green 2008). The website was an integral part of Obama’s success because

it allowed people to take a very active or passive role, a choice that had been lacking in other

campaigns6.

On My.BarackObama.com, it was possible to donate money or establish an individual

website to help solicit money from others to support Obama. These powerful tools allowed

Obama to reach out to individuals with small amounts of money that wanted to play a part in

6
The website still does exist, but since the election victory in November no longer focuses on
campaigning and instead focuses on disseminating information and helps facilitate discussion
among supporters.
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politics, but could not attend the traditional $2,000 per plate dinner. This model allowed Obama

to raise over $500 million online throughout his campaign, with 65 percent of the $150 million

raised in September 2008 coming from online donations. Overall, 3 million donors made over

6.5 million donations, 6 million of which were in increments of less than $100 (Vargas 2008).

The prior online fundraising record for a campaign was $27 million by Howard Dean in 2004, a

record that Obama easily surpassed. (Green 2008).

In the 2008 Democratic primary season, only 26 percent of the donations to Hillary

Clinton’s campaign were under $200, yet she still managed to raise millions and compete well

against Obama (Green 2008). Therefore, based on the statistics, Hillary was more reliant on the

traditional donor base that Obama had trouble tapping into initially, a problem Obama countered

by appealing to the younger and more technologically savvy demographic. These statistics

illustrate the vastly different campaigns that the two major Democratic candidates ran in the

primary7.

Even though Barack Obama had his own official social network, individuals also took

the initiative to help stand up sites on mainstream social networks to help support him. In early

2007, on the day that Obama announced his presidential exploratory committee, Farouk Olu

Aregbe started a group on Facebook group, “One Million Strong for Barack.” In less than a

week, the group had 10,000 members and within a month it had over 278,000 members (Vargas

2007). As of early June 2008, the group had amassed over 570,000 members and was one of the

most popular groups on Facebook. It is also important to note that Barack Obama’s own

7
Although the campaign of Clinton is outside the scope of this paper it is important to note her
relative inability to successfully raise money and mobilize support relative to Obama online to
show Obama’s true innovative approach in a similar timeframe.
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Facebook page had over 3 million supporters immediately following his election victory,

compared to just over one million supporters from mid-June.

The Obama campaign also used Twitter.com, a micro-blogging, social network to keep

supporters current with what the campaign was doing. The purpose of twitter.com is to answer

the question, “What are you doing?” so that friends (followers in twitter parlance) can keep up to

date with the activities of the twitterer. Obama’s campaign updated his twitter page many times

daily detailing where Obama was and what he was doing. Obama also announced his Vice-

President selection of Joe Biden via Twitter and mobile text message before releasing the

information to the press (Stelter 2008). In late October 2008, right before the election, Barack

Obama was the number one “twitterer” on the Internet with over 100,000 followers8. No other

politician was within any measurable distance of Obama (twitter.com).

In addition to the use of Twitter, the Obama campaign also developed an application for

the iPhone to help users of the device take a more active role in the campaign. The iPhone

application used an individual’s location to help direct them toward campaign events in the area

and other ways to get involved. The application also helped facilitate calling friends from the

individual’s phone book based on their location and delivered media and news updates of the

campaign directly to the phone. All of these features were very basic, but when combined they

allowed individuals to feel more connected to the campaign.

The use of new media by Obama contributed greatly to his general election win in

November 2008. Obama went from being a relatively unknown national political figure before

his 2004 DNC speech to President in 4 years. While it can be argued that the use of new media

by Obama was integral to his election and without it he would not have been as successful, it is

8
This statistic has grown to well over 250,000 since October 2008. President Obama last
updated his Twitter account the day before inauguration.
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also important to analyze the issues that Obama promoted. Obama had a relatively mainstream

Democratic stance on many issues, which appealed to the younger, more technically savvy

voters.

The Implications of Campaigning on the Internet

Obama is arguably the first Presidential candidate with an agenda dealing with

technological issues; the very issues many of his supporters cared about. Obama’s technology

platform called for a more open government by using the Internet for information dissemination

and the protection of the openness of the Internet and maintaining “net neutrality9” (Barack

Obama Campaign Website). These two objectives helped him appeal to his base. Obama is living

up to his objectives by disseminating his weekly address via YouTube and as a Podcast in iTunes

and embedding these videos on the website change.gov and whitehouse.gov (Farber 2008). As of

November 24, 2008, Obama’s first address had been viewed over 900,000 times on YouTube.

So the question still stands, why was Obama so successful whereas Paul and Dean were

not? The answer cannot solely be found in the quality of the candidates and their positions on

issues, though those reasons are significant. It is clear that Obama was successful in using the

new media to help bolster himself as a candidate and translate this attention into real votes. Both

Dean and Paul were weak candidates that had artificially been inflated because their access to

new media made them able to rally support though they were inherently weaker than Obama.

Their differing strategies lead to the their success or failure and offered lessons learned for future

campaigns.

9
Net Neutrality is the concept that a user will be able to use the Internet for whatever lawful
purpose they wish independent of the Internet service provider (ISP) they choose. Some ISP’s
have experimented with limiting the use of some websites or services and this is exactly what
Obama is trying to limit.
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Howard Dean, being the bellwether of using emerging new media such as social

networks, was partially the victim of being an early adopter. Dean was also a flawed candidate

that was able to garner artificial momentum because of his understanding of the new medium.

After his speech at the California State Democratic Convention in 2003, Howard Dean

catapulted onto the national scene, because he had a message and a medium to discuss it in.

Unlike candidates in the past, Dean had access to tools that could be utilized on a very a limited

budget to garner support and did not depend on traditional media or the national party to fully

recognize him.

Therefore, Dean was able to appeal to the masses and, by mobilizing the individuals

online to have them meet offline, he began to form geographically disparate groups that would

help him gain national momentum. His use of the online medium to mobilize helped him reach

beyond what he typically would be able to reach, but he was still dealing with a very small

amount of individuals that participated in these types of sites. As Dean garnered more followers,

national news outlets recognized this momentum and Dean began receiving traditional media

attention, which further contributed to his momentum. Though unsuccessful in his bid for the

nomination, the greatest success of Dean’s campaign was illustrating that the Internet could be

an effective campaign tool.

Unlike Dean, Ron Paul used the Internet to organize individuals online with the focus of

having them meet up online and offline. Paul, like Dean, may not have been the most popular

candidate, but he helped generate his own excitement by using the Internet as a rallying force to

generate a greater mass-market appeal and more campaign contributions. Paul used all of the

new media outlets in an effective manner to get time on traditional media outlets, very similar to
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Dean. Paul and his supporters used this exposure to raise large amounts of money in single day

fundraisers helping to further add to his momentum.

Paul’s Internet strategy was the next logical step from Dean’s because the technology had

matured and he had some unique vision for how to harness that technology. The individuals that

Paul was appealing to, happened to be in the younger demographic and had more experience

with the new, participatory media that Paul was using. These actions helped Paul better appeal to

his supporters, but in the end he did not translate the support into votes as evidenced by the

number of votes that he received.

The reasons for Paul’s lack of success were still similar to Dean’s. Paul and Dean did not

have a coordinated strategy to mobilize voters. They were good at developing momentum, but

this momentum had no focal point for supporters to come back to. Therefore, the momentum was

somewhat artificial in that the momentum did not translate into real votes and only existed

because of their use of new media. Overall, Paul’s message was too targeted to the “partisans” as

described by Holbrook and McClurg (2005).

Obama ran a very successful campaign, as evidenced by his winning of the Democratic

nomination and then the Presidency. What set Obama apart from the failures of Dean and Paul?

One differentiating factor was that Obama was a stronger candidate than Paul or Dean. Also,

Obama had a lot of competition from the Democratic elite, most specifically Hillary Clinton,

who had a solid fundraising and support base, and therefore Obama had to innovate. What

Obama did differently from the others in the past and his opponents in the primaries was reach

out using new social media and then draw his supporters back to a central focal point,

my.BarackObama.com.
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The fact that Obama was using new technology such as social networks and mobilizing

individuals during the primary season helped him throughout the primaries and into the general

election. The two-step registration process that is unique to the United States was somewhat

overcome, because of the very exciting primary season (Jackson 1996). Using these new tools

and appealing to a younger base allowed Obama to defeat Hillary Clinton in the primary

nomination process and go on to win the election in November.

Obama’s key demographic was younger and technologically savvy, but not necessarily

politically savvy. These individuals wanted some sort of change and Obama gave them a place to

make themselves feel relevant. By allowing such an array of opportunities on his website and by

constantly updating the social media sites that he and his staff controlled, his supporters felt like

they actually mattered in the campaign. This excitement and support led to one of the highest

election turnouts in 40 years, with 61.7 of the total voting-eligible population (VEP) voting

(George Mason 2009)10. On the other hand, Dean and Paul’s supporters were able to feel like

they mattered, but quickly realized that there was no central place for them to focus their efforts

on and this caused a loss in momentum.

This sense of involvement that Obama’s campaign generated made individuals feel as

though they should contribute money or come out to a rally. A Pew Research Center Study

conducted after the election in November 2008 illustrated interesting statistics about voters in the

2008 election. Sixty-six percent of those under the age of 30 voted for Barack Obama, which is a

13 percent disparity with the overall vote percentage garnered by Barack Obama of 53 percent.

Twenty-eight percent of young voters in battleground states attended a campaign event. This

10
The VEP is different from the Voting-Age Population (VAP), which is based on Census data
and those old enough to vote. The VEP takes into account those ineligible to vote, which often
times yields to higher percentages than those statistics using the VAP.
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statistic alone helps illustrate the success of the Obama’s campaign strategy to widely broadcast

their message and invite people to take part online and offline. In addition to those who attended

campaign events in the battleground states, 25 percent of those voters in the 18-29 demographic

claimed that someone from the Obama campaign contacted them about coming out to vote, a

figure that reached well over 50 percent in battleground states such as Pennsylvania and Nevada.

This is in stark contrast to the 13 percent of those in the 18-29 demographic that reported being

contacted by the McCain campaign (Keeter, Horowitz and Tyson 2008).

The statistics of those that were mobilized to vote and participate in campaign events are

very convincing. The fact that Obama used new technologies such as social networks and blogs

allowed him to reach out and mobilize individuals that he was then able to draw back to a central

point -- his own social networking site. This allowed the campaign to maintain contact with the

supporters that joined the Obama networks on the official social network or on similar pages on

Facebook or other social networks. This contact then created a positive feedback loop for support

and mobilization. These activities by the Obama campaign were in sharp contrast to the

disparate, and at times chaotic, online activities of Paul and Dean that never had a focal point and

never attempted to reach out to those outside of the their core supporters.

Conclusion – Looking to the Future

Now that Barack Obama is the President, a lot of possibilities exist for new media and

politics. Obama has already shown that he will keep to his promise of using the Internet to make

government more transparent. Obama is entering the White House with a network of millions of

supporters and an instant way to connect with them independent of the traditional news outlets.

This will allow him to control the message he is disseminating and be direct with the citizens of
 Mascaro 21

the United States. With the comfortable Democratic majority in Congress and this control of the

media, Barack Obama should be able to make a real difference early in his Presidency.

Technology is constantly evolving and changing the landscape of how people

communicate. This technology can be used to help strong candidates become stronger or to allow

relatively weak candidates to gain artificial momentum making them seem like better candidates

than they are. The key to using the disparate types of social media is to reach out and draw

supporters in, while continuing to reach out to the different forms of social media to find more

supporters and mobilize them to come out to vote. What really set Obama apart was that he was

able to circumvent the traditional mobilization cycle of only appealing to those that voted in the

past or strong partisans and in turn brought out many new voters or those that had not voted in

awhile as evidenced by the high turnout.

The evolution of communications in politics will continue as new technology emerges

and the candidates become more comfortable with it. The fact that Obama has used the Internet

in such a successful manner raises the bar for future candidates to find innovative ways to

fundraise and mobilize voters online. A lot of these techniques will be dictated by the technology

available, but it is possible that some of this technology may evolve as a result of the use of the

Internet in the political sphere.

 Mascaro 22

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