The internet has changed the way politics used to be played. In 2008, when Barack Obama won the presidential elections he was one of the first candidates to make such use of internet. His website had more than 1.5 million accounts which greatly helped him raise money. During his campaign, 3 million different donors gave money through the internet. In the end he had raised almost 800 million $ to spend for his campaign; whereas his opponent John McCain barely came close to 400 million. This was mainly due to Obama’s innovative way of using internet. We will look at different dimensions in which internet can have an impact during a political campaign.
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The first dimension is fundraising, money is the most important component to win an election. In history few candidates managed to win an election when they had less money than their opponent. For small donors (Under 200$) it is now very easy to give money to a given candidate through internet, 50% of the people who donated money to a candidate did it online during the 2012 election. It is a driving force for some candidates, Bernie Sanders raised 60% of the 230 million he raised for the Democratic Party primary thanks to small donors, he was considered as an outsider because of the political positions he was defending, and without internet he would never have given so much trouble to Hilary Clinton. More than helping the “big candidates”, donations can boost small candidate by mitigating the impact of large donors.
Mobilizing
Internet is a tool for candidates to mobilize crowds for a meeting or a reunion. Through social media, candidates can attract many people to an event. People can be seen as an advertisement intermediary, sharing content on Facebook or sending mails is free advertisement. Social networks are now also political platforms, were people, share, exchange and debate. Internet can be a great tool to reach a different audience that is younger and more sensitive to internet.
Connecting
We can see with Donald Trump’s use of twitter that internet has also become a way to connect with fans. The candidates can directly reach their audience, it is a direct channel to the electors. Candidates now have to react directly to anything, the speed of information now is instantaneous and internet allows that. For the users it also means that with internet you can have all the information you want, you can receive a full PDF of the program or you can just watch a 30 seconds video’s on who to vote for, the information can be tailored to the person.
It’s hard to predict who will win the next US election, but the one who will make the best use of internet will increase his or her chances. I personally think Donald Trump will win, as far as American people hate him they hate Hilary even more, more than we Europeans realize. And we are too confident Brexit happened…
Readings I made before writing this article:
https://www.opensecrets.org/pres16/candidate.php?id=N00000528
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jun/20/hillary-clinton-fundraising-report-donald-trump-us-election
http://www.doz.com/marketing-resources/three-ways-internet-changed-political-campaigns
Hi Arthur
Very interesting read and thank you for sharing. I personally think this is a very positive change, as now the lower and middle class can also donate money to their party in favour, and not just the upper class as was the case before. I also agree that the internet is a very useful tool for engaging voters and connect with them on a more ‘personal’ level. I have, however, come across some very interesting articles that suggest that the internet may also manipulate political campaigns. In an article by CNN it is suggested that Google can decide the outcome of the next presidential campaign by manipulating their search results. In an article by BBC, Robert Epstein who is a senior research psychologist at the American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology, was quoted saying “Search rankings have this powerful effect on votes for the same reason that they have one on consumer behaviour: the higher the ranking, the more people believe and trust the content, mistakenly assuming that some impartial and omniscient genie has carefully evaluated each Web page and put the best ones first.” Google has of course denied that they are manipulating their search engine, however, it is quite fascinating to see how we are all so easily blinded by what we read online, and how easy it is for one company to possibly control the outcome of an election.
Links to articles: http://money.cnn.com/2015/08/20/technology/google-2016-election/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-echochambers-27785535
Interesting blog! I don’t know a lot of politics, but you mention that it is unlikely someone can win the elections if the opponent has more money for the campain. Could you explain why this is? I see it that the elections can be bought, if it is about how much money you can raise. Later on in your blog, you mention the Internet and social media that can be used to communicate with fans and also use the people who use those media as advertisement intermediars. I think this is true, but it is important to mention that the social media not only create good information on the candidates, but also a lot of trashtalk and negativity. If something is not stated completely right, it can be devastating for the candidates. Ofcourse, the voters for the other candidates are likely to trashtalk about the candidate and create a negative vibe. So my point is, the internet and social media are not media for only positive use, but they have a realy big negative side.
Hi Michelle, the argument about money is especially true in the US presidential elections. In the USA most of the budget is used to finance advertisement, on TV, on the Radio… In Europe there is a lot of regulation regarding this, you are not even allowed broadcast advertisement. In the US there is little regulation, this favors the political parties who have the most money (Republican and Democrat). The main impact of this is for the smallest parties, it is impossible for them to gain visibility without having a lot of money to advertise themselves. For this reason countries like France have limitation on the maximum budget allowed, in France it is only 23 millions euros. It allows small parties to have more visibility and to allow different ideas to be brought in the public debate.
I put a link with the budget per US presidential election and the winner, on this you can see that most of the time money wins. In 1964, even though Barry Goldwater (Republican) lost with twice as much money, he was holding very conservative positions and lost with only 52 electoral votes compared to Lyndon Johnson who had 486 electoral votes… You can still see that most of the time, if one candidate has more money than the other one (>5%) he will ultimately win.
Internet allows smaller candidate to reach different audience however it only allows you to reach some “niche” of customers… the main political parties still occupy most of the attention, if you want to use internet to look for different parties suiting you more then you have to search for them. Most of the people who are not using internet (older people) or are not interested will not do this search.
I don’t think internet will changes politics dramatically, it just changes the way we do politic. It’s just a tool you need to use in order to win, if you use it more effectively than your opponent it can take a decisive edge.
You can’t buy election, but you can buy advertisement
PS: Negative noise is still positive, look at Donald Trump it served him greatly.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campaign_advertising#European_Union
http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/26816/has-every-u-s-presidential-election-been-won-by-the-candidate-with-the-most-mon
Dear Arthur, thank you for your blog! It is true that the internet transformed political campaigns, but if the Americans would truly use the internet, they would find out that Hillary is way more honest than Donald, and that he is possible the worst option they could pick. In any case, I agree with you that the internet offers great potential for candidates, and that it indeed transformed political campaigns. Another way the internet can be involved in political campaigns is through prediction markets, such as we saw in our last lecture (which predicted that Hillary will win)! I think political campaigns and the internet are definitely an interesting topic, and the outcome of this election will be very interesting too!
For reference about Hillary and Donald:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1Lfd1aB9YI (very much worth watching).