Democracy 2.0: the Facebook Election

The presidential election of 2008 shall go down in history for an obvious symbolic reason that will inspire future generations. Yet while pundits were focused on the question of Barack Obama’s race, another largely overlooked factor was his powerful techno-demographic appeal.

We know that Obama’s landmark victory was due, in part, to a groundswell of support among young Americans. Early in his campaign, political pollsters were observing that Obama was “rocking the youth vote”. This was proved true. Exit polls on Tuesday revealed that Obama had won nearly 70% of the vote among young Americans under 25 — the highest percentage since U.S. exit polling began in 1976.

Obama, in a word, enjoyed a groundswell of support among the Facebook generation. He indeed will be the first occupant of the White House to have won a presidential election on the Web.

This election was the first time that all candidates – presidential and congressional — attempted to connect directly with American voters via online social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace. It has even been called the “Facebook election”. It is no coincidence that one of Obama’s key strategists was 24-year-old Chris Hughes, a Facebook co-founder. It was Hughes who masterminded the Obama campaign’s highly effective Web blitzkrieg – everything from social networking sites to podcasting and mobile messaging.

Facebook was not unaware of its suddenly powerful role in American electoral politics. During the presidential campaign, the site launched its own forum to encourage online debates about voter issues. Facebook also teamed up with ABC for election coverage and political forums. And CNN teamed up with YouTube to hold presidential debates.

Obama’s masterful leveraging of Web 2.0 platforms marks a major e-ruption in electoral politics – in America and elsewhere - as campaigning shifts from old-style political machines, focussed on charming those at the top of organisations, towards the horizontal dynamics of online social networks. The Web, a perfect medium for genuine grassroots political movements, is transforming the power dynamics of politics. There are no barriers to entry on sites like Facebook and YouTube. Power is diffused towards the edges because everybody can participate. The Web is being used not only for vote-getting but also – as the Obama campaign demonstrated — for grassroots fundraising. Obama’s campaign drummed up more than $160 million from supporters who gave comparatively tiny amounts — $200 or less.

What was remarkable about the Obama team’s online efforts was how comparatively inexpensive they were. Obama’s spending on online advertising was comparatively tiny – less than $8 million. That pales into insignificance against his TV spending, including $4m on a half-hour TV special in the final week alone. About $3.5 million of the online spend was on adwords by Google searches. The spending figures for Facebook were also small — $467,000 in total, almost all ($370,000) in September.

In political campaigns, the Web is low-cost but high-reach. According to a survey by the Pew Research Center, nearly half — or 46% — of Americans used the Web, email or text messaging for news about the presidential campaign, to contribute to the debate, or to mobilize others. Some 35% of Americans said they’d watched online political videos — three times more than during the 2004 presidential election (before YouTube was created). And roughly 10% said they’d logged on to social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace to engage in the election.

Obama, who was often seen thumbing messages on his Blackberry during the campaign, is a new-generation politician who shrewdly understands the electoral power of the Web. Pulling out all the Web 2.0 stops, the Obama campaign used not only Facebook and YouTube, but also MySpace, Twitter, Flickr, Digg, BlackPlanet, LinkedIn, AsianAve, MiGente, Glee and others.

Obama was by a long stretch the most effective online politician during the presidential campaign – not only against John McCain, but also against his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton. For the past two years, Facebook has overwhelmingly been pro-Obama virtual territory. Some have attributed Obama’s victory to a “Facebook effect”.

At 47, he may be older than the average user there, but Obama is a natural Facebook politician. On his personal profile there - which featured his “Our Moment is Now” motto - Obama named his favourite musicians as Miles Davis, Stevie Wonder, and Bob Dylan, and listed his pastimes as basketball, writing, and “loafing w/kids” (note the hip shorthand).

The 72-year-old John McCain, by contrast, never managed to connect on Facebook. He gave one of his pastimes as “fishing” - which may be popular in some places, but ain’t hip - and listed Letters from Iwo Jima among his favourite movies. His profile even got “punked” by a prankster who hacked it and posted a phony policy announcement on his online profile: “Dear supporters, today I announce that I have reversed my position and come out in full support of gay marriage…particularly marriage between two passionate females.”

The statistics are telling. Obama had more than 2 million American supporters on Facebook; McCain, just over 600,000. On the microblogging platform Twitter, Obama could count on more than 112,000 supporters “tweeting” to get him elected. McCain, for his part, had only 4,600 followers on Twitter. (A map of declared support by American Twitter users found every state overwhelmingly Democrat, apart from South Dakota - which was only “mildly” Democrat.)

On YouTube, Obama’s supporters uploaded more than 1,800 videos onto the BarackObama.com channel, which counted about 115,000 subscribers. The channel attracted more than 97 million video views by some 18 million channel visits. Compare that to McCain’s YouTube presence: only 330 videos were uploaded to the JohnMcCain.com channel, which attracted just over 28,000 subscribers. The McCain channel attracted barely more than 2 million visits and some 25 million video views. Obama beat McCain 4 to 1.

The YouTube coup de grace was the blockbuster “Yes We Can” videoclip. The viral circulation of that video, watched by millions of Americans only days after it was first posted, gave Obama solid electoral credibility in Middle America. Suddenly he was like a pop star on MTV. The video wasn’t even made by the Obama campaign team: it was produced spontaneously by the hip hop star Will.i.am, from the group Black Eyed Peas.

Obama also effectively used podcasts and electoral messaging to mobile devices (he had already been doing so as a U.S. Senator). As one observer put it: “While Obama was making great use of podcasts, John McCain was missing in action.” The McCain campaign finally came up with the idea of posting a videogame called “Pork Invaders” on his Facebook page to underscore the war hero candidate’s determination to take on Washington “pork barrelling” (in which politicians manoeuvre lucrative schemes for their areas into legislation, to ensure re-election or repay favours bought to get them elected). The Obama team, meanwhile, was harnessing the power of network effects through an “Obama app” for iPhones, which allowed supporters to spread the pro-Obama message to everyone on their contact list.

Obama had already honed his Web 2.0 campaigning skills against Hillary Clinton. While political pundits were following the Obama-Clinton head-butting on the hustings, Obama was outmanoeuvring his Democratic rival below the radar on Facebook. In early 2007, more than a year before he won his party’s nomination, Obama had attracted a massive following on Facebook while Hillary Clinton was struggling with the negative fallout of a Facebook movement called “Stop Hillary Clinton”. While Obama’s Facebook page had attracted more than 250,000 members, Clinton’s page counted a paltry 3,200.

The Internet, to be sure, had already been deployed in political campaigns, but was used mainly to raise money. But as voters massively shift towards the Internet for social interaction, consumer purchasing, and political participation, office-seekers are rushing to establish an online presence and connect with voters on the ground. During the U.S. elections, more than 500 American politicians had their own Facebook page. Many more will in future elections – not only in the United States, but also in Britain, France, Germany, Canada, Australia and other democracies. From now on, success in electoral politics depends on having friends in low places.