Republicans have been coming up with excuses for months on why they didn’t win the 2012 Presidential election, and almost all of them have come to the same conclusion: they weren’t as good as Democrats at reaching out to voters. And what is the biggest way Democrats were able to reach out to their voters this last election? Through social media.
It’s a new age, and young voters have come out to vote in larger numbers than anyone thought. A big reason for this is the wider use of politics in the social media realm. Republican Party Chairman Reince Preibus admitted “The president’s campaign significantly changed the makeup of the national electorate and identified, persuaded and turned out low-propensity voters by unleashing a barrage of human and technological resources previously unseen in a presidential contest.”
Obama’s campaign had a social media army that dominated the social media sphere. They used Facebook, Twitter, You Tube, Instagram, Tumblr, and even set it up so that you could call Battleground State voters from your very own computer at home.
So let’s look at the social media numbers:
Pew Research Center conducted a poll where they found that at least 60% of adults use social media. And 66% of social media users share their thoughts on political issues.
There are about 240 million people who are old enough to vote in the United States and there are 154 million registered Facebook users who are old enough to vote.
Pew also found that 38% of social media users “liked” political material posted by others
During the election, Obama’s Facebook page had over 28 million “likes” where Romney had just over 7 million
On Twitter, Obama had over 19 million followers compared to Romney’s 1.5 million followers
Social Media is continuing to grow and Republicans have some serious ground to make up if they want to attract the ever-growing youth vote and reach out to the growing number of adults that are joining the social media world. If they truly want to connect with their voters, making up ground in the social media world would be a good place to start.
Social media is a great way to speed communication as well. It’s good to see Democrats utilize these kinds of tools to spread the message around.
The slow adaptation to social media as a primary, or at least significant, avenue in which to interact with the American public is an issue worth exploring more. It seems to me it has many parallel comparisons with the reluctance of many in the Republican Party yo adapt to change. This article points out the WIDE difference in how something ‘new, upcoming and yet extremely influential’ was utilized by both parties in this last election. I guess that ” Wherever we go, there we are!”