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How one BC candidate targets the young condo-dweller vote

Matt Toner's defeat of Constance Barnes, a Vancouver park board commissioner with name recognition, for the BC NDP nomination in False Creek last year may have surprised some NDP bona fides at the time.

But it's clear the party sees Toner as tailor-made for the riding, because of his leadership role in Vancouver's struggling digital media industry -- and because social media could play more of a role in Vancouver-False Creek than in any other riding in the upcoming provincial election.

Toner thinks this way too. "People are on Facebook these days, even your parents, and that wasn't the case in the 2009 election. So I think the currency of this campaign will be Facebook 'likes.' That is going to be the measure of success.

"If you are campaigning in Point Grey or Fairview, you have access to people. Even on the south side of False Creek, you do. But downtown here, it doesn't work that way."

The Obama campaign used "split tests" in the 2012 presidential election to come up with the best online method to persuade people to give votes and dollars. Toner's social media team is using the same technique, firing off emails with different messages to potential supporters, to see which ones are most effective.

"The idea is: You try this and you try that, and you make one small difference between them, and then you see who responds to which message, until you find the sweet spot," said Toner. "You look at the metrics: How many people opened a newsletter versus those who didn't? Or how many clicked on a link in the newsletter? You're looking for the right pressure point.

"You're trying to take people who might be passive lurkers and turn them into active volunteers."

Editor: To read Doug Ward's entire feature on how the NDP's Toner plans to use social media to win over False Creek, which the BC Liberals won by a healthy margin in 2009, click here.

Tyee election reporting team member Doug Ward is a Vancouver writer, previously with the Vancouver Sun.


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