The victory of Senator Obama in Iowa caucus, last January 3, is it also the result of an actively net-campaign? In an article on "Movement candidates and the digital world ", the portal PoliticsOnline writes that Team Obama has created a campaign with more than 400K online contributors, hundreds of thousands of social networking “friends”, and millions of people tuning into online videos. This community with roots in the online world and results in the real world may be the beginning of a new era in American politics. Youth vote in Iowa tripled ans accredit this idea.
According PoliticsOnline, rarely do movement candidates succeed in capturing their party’s presidential nomination much less the White House. The last three movement candidates to secure a major
political party presidential nomination were Barry Goldwater, George
McGovern, and Ronald Reagan. Only Reagan garnered electoral success.
Goldwater and McGovern changed politics, but both failed dramatically
in the general election. But does the rise of the digital world and technological
innovation provide rocket fuel to propel the Illinois senator to the White House?
It is too soon to say what was the Internet impact on the US campaign, but we can see already that this campaign show us several signs. According to estimates by CIRCLE (pdf) youth vote turnout at the caucus tripled. And, according to entrance polls by CNN, 57% of those 17-29 year old caucus goers stood up to caucus for Barack Obama.
- The PoliticsOnline article
Among all online ressources about the US presidential campaign:
- PoliticsOnline Portal (in english)
- I love Politics (in French)
- US and us (in French)
- Is Obama a new JFK? (Jan 2007)
