A record-setting number of young voters in 20 states participated in last week’s Super Tuesday primaries, and experts who spoke at GW over the past week all agree that the Internet is responsible for energizing this segment of the population.
The Institute for Politics, Democracy and the Internet, the research wing of GW’s Graduate School of Political Management, held a “post-mortem” discussion of Super Tuesday last week with a panel of industry experts who analyzed the ways in which technology is shaping the election.
Because the Internet allows more people to get involved in the political process than ever before, the fate of this election is back in the people’s hands, the panelists said.
“The (election) process has been completely democratized and the campaigns are losing control,” said Mark McKinnon, vice chairman of Public Strategies, president of Maverick Media and an adviser to Sen. John McCain’s (R-Ariz.) presidential campaign.
McKinnon said the “YouTube phenomenon,” the idea that political advertisements posted on YouTube for free can have just as much more impact on an election than paid advertisements run on TV, has had a significant impact on this election cycle.
The panelists spoke specifically of how Illinois’ Democratic Sen. Barack Obama’s (D-Ill.) campaign has benefited from its innovative use of the Internet.
“I think it would be very difficult for Barack Obama to succeed in the way he has without the Internet,” said Ana Marie Cox, Washington editor for Time.com.
Cox added that Obama’s successful use of the Internet has nothing to do with his campaign Web site, but rather his use of “third party” sites such as Facebook and MySpace that “make voters feel like they are part of a community.”
Rep. Ron Paul (R-Tex.) is another presidential primary candidate who wants to harness the power of the Internet in his favor. Two directors of Paul’s campaign spoke to political communications students enrolled in a course about the Internet and politics Monday night.
Justine Lam, Paul’s online director, said the campaign found its place online out of necessity; in his campaign’s infancy, Paul was a largely unknown candidate.
“We decided from the beginning that we (could not) afford to be a traditional campaign with offices all over, we had to be an online campaign,” Lam said.
Like Obama, Paul’s campaign used social networking Web sites to garner support and name recognition, which in turn led to a sum of campaign contributions much higher than anyone in Paul’s camp anticipated.
Paul’s Campaign Fundraising Director Johnathan Bydlak said his co-workers are still trying to make sense of Paul’s Internet success, but added that he attributes some of the success to the campaign’s financial transparency. Paul was one of the first candidates to publicly display his quarterly campaign contributions on his Web site.
Adam Green, the GW professor who invited members of Paul’s campaign to speak with his students, said politics is experiencing a shift away from “top down” communications and toward a model that allows many people to have a voice.
Green said, “What’s new (in the 2008 election) is that young voters traditionally have been thought of as not being active voters, but sites like Facebook and YouTube have a unique reach with young people; therefore, in 2008 the Internet is galvanizing young people to vote like never before.”
