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13 August 2008
Congressional Candidates Take Campaigns to Facebook, MySpace
Social networking sites are new frontier in Virginia 2nd's political landscape
Washington -- Virginia Senate hopefuls Jim Gilmore, 58, and Mark Warner, 53, grew up in a world without Facebook or MySpace.
They didn't weigh friend requests, post their favorite photos online or leave messages on friends’ walls.
But now, Warner’s Facebook page broadcasts to the world that he’s a fan of Bob Dylan and Star Trek. Gilmore’s MySpace profile says he’s a Libra and includes birthday wishes from supporters.
It’s all part of campaigning in the digital age.
“It is taking these tools and giving people a way to connect with the campaign,” said Jesse Mallory, who handles field communications for Gilmore’s campaign. “A lot of it is taking the traditional aspects of the campaign and adapting it to the modern day.”
Candidates in this year’s Virginia congressional races increasingly are turning to social networking sites as an integral part of their campaign strategy.
Warner’s campaign Web site links to his Facebook page, as well as a Twitter feed where constituents can subscribe to real-time updates (called “tweets”) on his whereabouts. Recent “tweets” included “heading over to the Fiddler's Convention in Galax,” and “at Lynne's Family Restaurant in Mathews.” Gilmore also keeps profiles on Facebook and MySpace, and his campaign Web site includes “blogger resources” where voters can download computer backgrounds with his logo or a browser bar featuring a news feed of his activities.
Candidates for the Virginia 2nd Congressional District seat are equally Internet-savvy. A few clicks on Representative Thelma Drake’s campaign page and you can be her friend on Facebook or MySpace, or watch her give a speech supporting fellow Republican John McCain on YouTube. Her opponent, Democrat Glenn Nye, boasts his own digital photo gallery, a Facebook group with more than 200 supporters and links to MySpace and LinkedIn on his campaign page.
It’s a wise move, according to a January study on campaign news and political communication by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press and the Pew Internet & American Life Project. The study found about one in five Americans use an online social networking site such as MySpace or Facebook, and these sites may be taking on an important political role in the lives of young people.
Two-thirds of Americans ages 18 to 29 use social networking sites, the study found, and 27 percent said they got information about candidates and campaigns from such sites. Among those ages 18 to 24, that figure rose to 37 percent. Additionally, nearly one in 10 people under age 30 said they had signed up as a “friend” of a candidate on a social networking site.
“We don’t tell youth what tools to use -- they tell us,” Mallory said. “They like the Facebook and the MySpace.”
Providing an access point in the digital world often can translate into support for more traditional campaign events. Recently, Nye’s Facebook group advertised a fundraiser for young professionals at a supporter’s home in Virginia Beach.
Online photos and videos also have proved popular in Virginia 2nd races this campaign season. All the congressional candidates link to YouTube from their campaign sites, and many post news and video clips directly on their campaign home pages.
According to the Pew study, nearly a quarter of Americans say they have watched something about a political campaign online -- a speech, interview, advertisement or debate. Roughly 40 percent of people under age 30 have watched at least one form of campaign video online.
The potential political impact of Web video was made clear in the 2006 Virginia Senate race, where a video of then-incumbent Senator George Allen mocking a young Indian-American working for his opponent became a YouTube sensation. Allen’s loss was attributed in part to the widely circulated video.
Ana Gamonal, communications director for Gilmore’s campaign, said she takes bloggers and online journalists just as seriously as print journalists from Virginia’s major newspapers. Both MySpace and YouTube are becoming sources of campaign news that target younger voters. In the study, MySpace was cited as a campaign news source by 8 percent of young online election news consumers, while less than 1 percent of those ages 30 and over got news there. The pattern for YouTube was almost identical.
Younger voters traditionally have been a hard-to-reach demographic, with less than half of people ages 18 to 24 voting in the last four presidential elections. But it seems the tide is beginning to turn. This year, young voter turnout tripled or even quadrupled in many primary states. More than 6.5 million young voters participated in the primary contests and caucuses this year, an increase of 103 percent over 2004.
After the 2006 midterm elections, Democratic Senate candidate Warner emphasized the participation of young people in a blog entry for his political action committee, Forward Together:
“Because … we believe it’s about the future versus the past -- and yes, because I have an avatar in the virtual online world of Second Life, friends on Facebook, some podcasts on YouTube, and a historic text message youth voter registration contest -- we were particularly proud to see this statistic: Exit polls show young Americans voted in the largest numbers in at least 20 years in congressional elections,” Warner wrote.
As he moves forward in his own race in 2008, the efforts to reach out continue -- both in the physical and virtual political landscapes. Stay tuned for another “tweet” soon.
This article is part of America.gov’s continuing coverage of seven of the 435 U.S. congressional districts during the 2008 campaign. Each offers a different prism though which to view U.S. politics. For more information, see U.S Elections - State and Local.
