White House Race Uses E-politics To Chase Youth Vote

NEXT time your children are in MySpace, consider this: they might be joining a political movement.

Almost all the US presidential hopefuls have now set up profiles on MySpace and Facebook, social networking sites that, until now, had been the domain of teenagers who used them to share photos and link up with with friends.

But in this presidential race, where no stone can be left unturned in the quest for votes and money, the sites have become part of the standard armoury of internet campaign directors in every candidates campaign bunker.

Peter Daou is the internet director of Hillary Clintons campaign and presides over an empire of "about 10 and growing" staff who are responsible for her online presence at hillaryclinton.com.

This week the Clinton campaign scored a major coup with a video spoof of the Sopranos last episode, starring Hillary and Bill.

Set in the diner where the last scene of the TV series takes place, it was created to announce the winning theme song for the campaign — a contest that had also taken place over the internet.

Within 48 hours the Sopranos clip had recorded more than a million hits to the site, with another 100,000 on YouTube and an estimated 200,000 more to other sites.

"Its been hugely successful," says Mr Daou. "Its a huge viral movement. And it was really fun too."

Aside from showing a light-hearted side to Hillary Clinton, the buzz it created around the campaign was priceless: several days of good media stories and a surge in momentum.

But the real value of internet campaigns are that they can energise young voters who have had relatively low participation rates in the democratic process compared with people over 65.

Thanks to the Iraq war and rising college tuition fees it seems the 2008 presidential election will bring an unprecedented number of 18 to 29-year-old voters to the polls for the first time.

Young Voter Strategies, a project funded by the Pew Foundation to encourage participation among 18 to 29-year-olds found that 2 million more young voters participated in the 2006 congressional elections than in 2002, when 8 million participated.

"A new generation of voters has arrived as a force in politics," says Heather Smith, director of the project.

"Todays young adults have proved that theyre a critical voting bloc for both political parties to court. At 42 million strong, this generation will only grow in influence."

But reaching them is the trick.

"You have a massive shift in consumer power," says Joe Trippi, regarded as the guru of internet campaigning, thanks to the huge success he had in online fund-raising for Howard Deans 2004 presidential campaign. This time around, he is working for Democrat John Edwards.

"Its about video on demand; people want to watch it when they want it. Its no longer a bunch of Goliaths running around; its an army of Davids empowered against the big Goliaths," he says.

With empowerment of supporters though, comes a loss of control. As well as attracting fans to the official sites, the enthusiasm has spilled over into freelance sites as well.

Barack Obamas campaign found this out early when it received unwanted negative publicity earlier this year by asking MySpace to claim back the Obama page, which was being used for a huge fanclub set up by college student Joe Anthony in 2004.

Then this month there was the Obama Girl videoclip, put together by a site called barelypolitical.com, whose slogan, "Politics is ugly. Girls are pretty", says it all. Obama took the spoof with relatively good grace — after all it was viewed by 20 million people worldwide.

But the experience underlined what Mr Trippi and Mr Daou stressed at a recent seminar: candidates can no longer control the message and they just have to go with the flow.

But the biggest power of the net is its potential to fund-raise like never before. If you go to Hillaryclinton.com to watch the video, youll notice prominent red buttons you can press to make online donations.

"In 2008 I think you will see candidates go way past $500 million and have millions of people sign up," says Mr Trippi.

Perhaps the biggest surprise of the cyber campaign is Ron Paul, an outsider in the Republican race, according to published official polls, which put his support at around 2 per cent. But not according to the internet.

On Technorati, which tracks activity in the blogosphere, the obscure libertarian Texas congressman and former gynaecologist is up there among the most searched terms with Britney Spears, Paris Hilton, YouTube and iPhone.

http://hillaryclinton.com

http://johnedwards.com

http://barackobama.com

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