Graphic - Shawn Atkins
With a slight and warm hum from a laptop computer, a potential Stark County voter connects to the Internet a few days before this year’s Election Day.
Google search: John Boccieri
Top hits: Congressman John Boccieri and John Boccieri for Congress
The first link leads the politically curious web surfer to Boccieri’s congressional homepage; the second, to his campaign site.
Google search: Jim Renacci
Top hits: 16th Congressional District: Jim Renacci for Congress
As expected, the link leads to Renacci’s official campaign site.
Several county, state and federal political hopefuls, including Boccieri, D-Alliance, and challenger Renacci, R-Wadsworth, took to websites, social networks and the like to strengthen their campaigns for the midterm election this year.
Net worth
Traditional methods seem to work best as voter bait, but when it comes to keeping voter attention and building relationships, the web is where it’s at.
In a 2010 study conducted by the E-Voter Institute, which included 1,581 respondents, 60 percent of the survey participants said TV advertisements got their attention, but only about 40 percent said the ads kept their attention. Other traditional campaign methods, such as debates and phone calls, yielded similar results.
The outcome inverts for new online methods; blogs, social network sites, official websites and other web-based platforms (save for online display ads) had a higher percentage in the “keep attention” category.
This may be due to the web being used as a sort of “digital town hall.”
Photo Illustration - Amadeus Smith and Bailey DuBois
Jeff Matthews, deputy director at the Stark County Board of Elections, said the web allows constant communication between voters and candidates, and this leaves voters feeling more involved.
“People feel a part of a campaign when they can interact, learn more and have their questions answered,” Matthews said.
The study also shows how respondents claiming to be politically active participate in campaigns and elections.
It shows that 70 percent of those surveyed said they get involved by voting. And while only 20 percent said they volunteer and 24 percent said they donate, 61 percent said they get involved through social networks.
But Josh Kohut, a 19-year-old student at Stark State College, doesn’t trust most social networking sites to provide accurate information about the candidates.
“An online forum is just opinions shoved onto a page,” said Kohut. “There’s no guarantee you’ll read anything true or worth knowing.”
The online network of prospective voters isn’t just made up of kids in their late teens and college students.
Matthews said that using social networks, websites and other online venues is the most viable way of getting the youth vote, a typically untapped and underrepresented demographic. But politicians can reach potential voters as old as 40 or 50 as more and more join social networks.
A study by comScore, which looked at American adults and their use of Facebook, revealed similar percentages in age groups ranging from 18 to 54.
The study shows that of all Facebook users: 17.9 percent are 18 to 24, 20.9 percent are 25 to 34, 19.6 percent are 35 to 44 and 15.7 percent are 45 to 54.
“We’re seeing a large wave of interest in (campaign) Facebook accounts and Twitter accounts,” said Jessica Kershaw, communications director for Boccieri’s campaign.
The Boccieri pages seem to show the push to social networks and campaign websites.
“We were able to get responses and likes within two seconds of wall posts,” Kershaw said.
She said that the campaign has seen the most messages in general on the website, but the Facebook pages have the most messages in a short amount of time. In any case, she said the campaign website became a “living site” with the amount of interaction taking place.
The E-Voter study also indicates that 81 percent of survey respondents expected candidates to have an official website.
Other expectations in candidate Internet use in campaigns were:
Percentage of participants who expected candidates to be on Twitter – 41
Percentage of participants who expected candidates to participate in social network sites – 50
Percentage of participants who expected candidates to have blogs and podcasts – 54
Percentage of participants who expected candidates to put TV ads on official website – 66
Kohut said he doesn’t like when campaigns recycle made-for-TV ads online. For Kohut, the more creative the ad, the more likely he is to pay attention.
“People can ignore Facebook ads, but TV doesn’t give you a choice,” said Kohut. “I would watch political videos on Youtube, but only if they weren’t straight off the TV. I could look at anything else online. So online ads need to be more creative and less obnoxious to get people to watch them.”
Another comScore ARS marketing study in October found that the creative quality of a product’s ads is four times more influential on brand sales than pricing, promotion or distribution. Campaigns adjusting to social media may have a harder time selling tried and true ideas in this digital medium. The power of the internet is its ability to promote an idea to infinity—if the idea is packaged well enough to keep its viewers’ attention.
Obama leads the way for the GOP
The landslide Republican victory in this election is widely thought to be due to overwhelming disappointment among Americans in Obama’s progress with the economy.
Two years is just too long to wait for an economic 180, courtesy of the Obama administration.
“We want instant gratification,” said Matthews.
The public was looking for big change and fast, he said, and when the promises of the ’08 campaign weren’t delivered speedily, people grew restless and frustrated.
The big lesson to take away from that is that the Republicans learned a lesson in 2008.Jeff Matthews, deputy director at the Stark County Board of Elections
However, Matthews said it was also a strong and unified campaign effort from the Republican Party that helped them get wins in several elections, leading nationally to their takeover of the U.S. House of Representatives. Democrats retained the Senate with 53 seats.
And part of that boom was in the GOP’s use of the Internet– a strategy modeled after Obama’s ’08 campaign, Matthews said.
“The big lesson to take away from that is that the Republicans learned a lesson in 2008,” he said.
According to a publication by Edelman, a global PR firm, in 2008, Obama’s presidential campaign used a system of campaign engagement that set up varying levels of online support at a personal, social and advocate level. Each level was associated with specific web-related responsibilities.
Those engaged at a personal level could become friends with Obama on a social network, post comments, make donations, sign-up for email or text messages and register to vote. At a social level, supporters could post pictures and video for the campaign, blog about the election, make a profile on Obama’s website and join an Obama group. Finally, advocates were encouraged to recruit others to donate money, host an event or create support groups.
Obama’s campaign took advantage of its supporters’ enthusiasm by providing raw materials on the campaign website for users to generate videos, blogs and publications.
“The campaign could not possibly have generated this much content on its own. And it was better that it didn’t,” the Edelman report asserted.
Edelman’s 2008 Trust Barometer found that 60 percent of those polled agreed that “a person like myself” was a trusted source of information, as compared to 21 percent who said that they would trust a government official or regulator. Social media worked in the Obama campaign because it provided an open forum for the voice of the average American. Political gab was approachable through the digital world.
Obama’s campaign also established online credibility by gradually building an online presence and expanding step by step.
First, the campaign created a website and put feelers out to get a sense of what the online community was talking about. The campaign then expanded through content such as podcasts, videos, games and widgets. Third, they reached out to online advertisers, bloggers and other influencers. Finally, they embraced the community on social networks, blogger tours, through advocacy, mobile communication and contests.
Facebook official
Boccieri and Renacci’s presence on Facebook was, and is, similar.
Both have multiple pages on the networking site, such as politician pages, personal profiles (Boccieri’s links from his Congressional website) and campaign pages.
In addition to a page which links from the Boccieri’s campaign site, Kershaw said campaign staff experimented with other Facebook pages. One of these was a politician page– an “up-and-coming trend among politicos”, according to Kershaw.
John Boccieri's politician page. Courtesy of facebook.com
She said Boccieri wanted to communicate through various pages, seeing which network route would work best.
When it comes to numbers, Renacci had the edge a week after the election with a total of 3,243 friends, page likes or group members. This number is without adding the number of friends from his profile as that number could not be seen. Boccieri had just under 2,000 of the same.
But Kershaw said the Boccieri Facebook pages got a lot of traffic (“…responses and likes within two seconds of wall posts”), and it didn’t stop there.
She said she believed the Democrats had an advantage over their Republican opponents when it came to online media use.
“It’s hard to believe our opponent could compete against the support we had in our online media world,” she said.
Photos (via Flickr) and video (via Youtube) were shared with the online community after each stop on the trail, she said, noting that people cannot attend every event. Both accounts are linked to the campaign homepage, allowing people to view them directly on that site.
A “Contact John” button was a prominent part of the site as well, Kershaw said. She and Boccieri, along with a few staffers to relay messages, checked the site several times a day to correspond with people leaving questions, positive comments and criticisms for the candidate.
Before entering Renacci’s official campaign site, a pop-up displays three ways to connect with the Republican candidate: Donate, Get Involved and Facebook.
The “Get Involved’ page seems to be the place where a similar dialogue can take place.
Jim Renacci's campaign page. Courtesy of facebook.com
After several phone calls, Renacci’s spokesman James Slepian could not be reached.
Republicans, at least in Ohio, seemed to have a stronger hold on social network use in general.
Take the Ohio gubernatorial race.
According to unofficial election results from the Ohio Secretary of State, John Kasich won the election against Gov. Ted Strickland by 97,052 votes.
The day before the election Kasich had 13,387 Twitter followers. Strickland had 4,617.
But online popularity can’t be directly linked to election results.
Overall in Ohio, more Republicans than Democrats, running for state offices and U.S. Congressional seats, had Twitter accounts. But while the GOP won a majority of those seats, some district results proved a more prominent web presence won’t decide an election.
Rich Iott (R), who had a Twitter account, ran in the 9th District, but that district went to Democrats. Democrat Paula Brooks had an account and was vying for the 12th congressional seat, but that went to Republicans. The score was three districts to two in Ohio when both party candidates had Twitter accounts.
Running a campaign on fewer dollars and thus allowing less backer influence? Priceless… and unlikely
Traditional campaigning won’t soon vanish, even with the low cost and far reach of the Internet.
“In terms of communicating, there’s no doubt that social media has become a game-changer, but traditional TV and radio will not soon disappear,” Curt Mayhew, a campaign finance administrator at the Ohio Secretary of State’s Office, said in an email.
And despite a vehicle that allows for such a fast, easy community discourse, Matthews said he has seen, at least locally and especially from the Republican Party, a resurgence of neighborhood canvassing.
Matthews said voters tend to remember a personal encounter with a candidate better than a TV ad or seeing the candidate in a debate period. It was that campaign door-to-door service that really made an impact on him when he was younger.
As of Oct. 13, Boccieri had collected $1.87 million in campaign funding. Contributions from Political Action Committees (PACs) made up $970,845 of that total and $857,871 came from individuals.
Meanwhile, Renacci brought in a total of $2.27 million by that same date, according to the Federal Election Commission (FEC). PACs contributed substantially less, with $275,780, than the ones backing Boccieri, but individual contributions totaled $1,117,180.
Expense reports from the FEC show that expenses clearly marked as going toward computers, the web and other related items made up less than half a percent of Renacci’s total disbursements (spent finances). It was only about one percent for Boccieri.
Web related expenses appear to be low currently, but Mayhew suspects that any major social media use has already “affected the traditional cost of a particular campaign”.
But that doesn’t mean that an entirely online campaign would decrease funds raised or spent.
“My guess, however, is that candidates will continue to raise as much money as possible just in case their polling suggests they’ll have to buy some TV or radio,” he said, noting that a change in the necessary funds for a campaign is hard to quantify.
What’s more, there would likely be no change from financial backers as well.
“Highly unlikely as both lobbyists and PACs will want to be active in helping the candidate they believe will help them best. The traditional method of ‘being active’ is sending money, which I don’t see changing anytime soon,” Mayhew said.
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