A day before British Columbians decide who will lead the province, a man credited with much of the success behind U.S. President Barack Obama’s rise to the top dropped into Vancouver to share some wisdom.
David Plouffe was the campaign manager behind Obama’s historic road to the White House, a campaign that has become synonymous with the groundbreaking use of technology and social media to fuel its success.
“We built the most powerful grassroots fundraising machine in the history of, really, the world of politics,” Plouffe said during a speech Monday at Convergence 09, a conference on digital media. “Social media and our social networking site allowed that to happen.”
By the time the campaign was over, Plouffe said, the Obama campaign had raised almost $750 million; roughly $500 million of that came online. Half of the donors, Plouffe said, had never before given money to a political campaign.
The Obama social networking site allowed volunteers in so-called ‘red states,’ seen as unlikely to support the candidate from the Democratic Party, to connect and co-ordinate an on-the-ground push while the overall campaign concentrated on key swing ridings.
“If we had not had these grassroots supporters in these states organized on their own, Barack Obama would not have won the presidency,” Plouffe said.
Since Obama’s victory, political campaigners of all stripes have rushed to update their social media campaigns. Political parties in B.C. were no exception, actively campaigning using tools like Facebook and Twitter and incorporating video and cell phone texts into their messaging.
But using the technology doesn’t mean campaigns can carbon copy Obama’s success.
While digital tools enabled the Obama campaign to connect, the key ingredient was Obama himself.
“This was only possible because our candidate inspired people to do something they had never done in their lives,” Plouffe said.
Irwin Loy reports for 24 hours Vancouver.
4
Login or register to post comments
BC Boy
3 years ago
Did Obama get all of his support through Facebook?
Social Networking is fine, but that in itself will not win any election. It helps, but there's a world of difference between the usual bland U.S. politics as compared to the more hard fighting Canadian and B.C. political genre.
Obama won because the Americans wanted change, and grew tired and weary of GW Bush
and the Republicans. If you look at the results of the Presidential ballot, many Republicans voted for Obama.
It's been a bit laughable to see both the BC Liberals and the NDP trip over themselves to try and mimic the so-called
digital networking.
The BC Liberals' "BCL TV" isn't all that new when you get to it. It's nothing more than embedded video filmed by those privileged to ride the campaign bus and get
paid to do it.
The NDP's "phone 'em at home" programme was
something new.
The BC Liberals had a website provision for the candidates, but it is heavily micromanaged and wasn't worth the effort to
wait days to get the material to show up
so the voting public could see it.
The NDP probably had the same sort of thing.
With the impending close race between the
BC Liberals and the NDP, are the social networking tools such as Facebook and Twitter actually going to make any huge
difference? I'd say no.
If there was any huge benifit, there would
be an stratospheric rise in the voter turnout, but there probably won't be.
But the only way to increase the voter turnout is to forget the blogs Facebook,
and Twitter, and just get out there and vote.
Nothing else matters.
WHAT
3 years ago
Social networking will work
Social networking will work a lot more with the younger generation at first, but what happens when I become a man of years, I'll be on the blogs as well (I'm sure they will be a new technology by then, I have a fair deal of years to go.
One this is for sure....Voters in the US wanted change, and I believe BC does too. We are more aware of CEO/Political Leaders and corruption...It almost cost the US citizens their liberty...
Social networking is a good check and balance on the state controlled media...
RossK
3 years ago
I'm with BC Boy....
I was very surprised by how lame the online presence of both major BC parties was.
The only place where I saw a slight advantage was for the Dippers in terms of their rapid response stuff....
What I found most disappointing was the lack of fundraising push (especially from the Dippers). However, the issue here might be the much shorter campaign vs. what happens in the States...However, I expect that this could change next time 'round what with the fixed date (ie. the Dippers could really work to cut into that big money Corp advantage that the Libs have well before the writ is dropped....that was something that was critical for Obama, especially early in the primary season before he gained momentum, and started to attract KStreet/CorpCash)....
____
I also kind of agree with 'What' as well, not in terms of social networking though, but instead in terms of the real rise in the influence of non-monopolistic media online here in Lotusland....The Hook is an example, of course, but even the ol' warhorse the GStraight saw a bit of resurgence with their EBlog (the daily/running non-columnist Eblogs of the monopolists on the other hand were all crap...either cheerleading or essentially only slightly-snarky wire copy).
What I didn't see, however, was the emergence of a provincial Frances Bula, who just killed (and brought in folks from all parties) in the last Vancouver Civic Election) both because of her knowledge of the scene and the fact that she also mixed it up in the comments and allowed her personality and passion to shine through...I don't want to discount the work of Sean Holman here, because it was top notch as usual, it just wasn't fully election-focussed....Wonder if this state of affairs might change next time around if a bunch of folks get cut loose in the impending CanWest implosion and try and make a go of it with freelancing and blogging as Ms. Bula has done....
____
I would be remiss if I didn't mention the online work of Paul Willcocks who gave us value-added over the past few weeks (ie. more than just his dead tree column posted up....Addtionally, V Palmer's extra stuff was great too....However, again, neither of these two go whole hog in the bloggodome for extended periods of time like Ms. Bula....
.
RossK
3 years ago
And for what it's worth....
....Here are my thoughts on ridings to watch for anybody who wants try and get a handle on which way the wind is blowing come 8:01pm tomorrow night.....
.