1st edition

When Barack Obama accepted the Democratic Nomination on August 29, his chances against McCain seemed grim. The Republican machine was growing stronger and the Democrats seemed to be divided over their party’s candidate. The Senator was facing an even steeper challenge back in 2007 when he declared that he would run for President. His supporters were steady but optimism about his success was a rare commodity. Not many people fancied the chances of a black man from Illinois securing the nomination, let alone making it to the White House.

Now, just a few days before the decisive votes are to be cast, I’m sitting back and trying to reflect upon the present state of the campaign and wondering how it came to be. Obama is leading in almost every poll and McCain seems to be slowly fading out of the picture as ripples of division grow within his party.

“We know the battle ahead will be long,” declared a victorious Obama in New Hampshire after winning key primaries for the Democratic nomination. “But always remember that nothing can stand in the way of millions of voices calling for change.” And its no secret that many of those voices were to be found on a new frontier of global politics: the Internet. When the Democratic debates were broadcast on YouTube for the first time in July, the Internet signaled that it would play a significant role in the upcoming elections.

America might be evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats, but the demographics of the online world are vastly different. The Obama campaign has so far trumped its rival on all the major Internet battlegrounds. The Internet has not only helped Barack Obama raise record-breaking funds; it has also helped him mobilize support and fight Republican “smears”.

The YouTube electorate

On YouTube, Obama’s channel has released more than 1,710 videos which are now beamed immediately to over 108,682 subscribers. The campaign has received nearly 18 million channel views and their videos have been watched and promoted by many more. In comparison, McCain’s channel has posted only 315 videos with less than 30,000 subscribers and 2 million channel views. In the time it took McCain’s subscribers to grow from 27332 to 27335, Obama’s number had jumped from 108,662 to 108,682.

Videos posted by users also show a significant pro-Obama trend. While McCain’s and Palin’s ‘gaffes’ are closely scrutinized by the YouTube Electorate, Obama’s speeches and advertisements are often glorified. A YouTube search for “Obama speech” pulls up videos which are mostly pro-Obama. But type in “McCain speech” and you’ll notice that more than half the resulting videos do not reflect favorably upon John McCain.

Digg, Facebook, Twitter and Myspace

Obama has also had a clean sweep on Digg.com, a social network that lets users submit and ‘Digg’ their favorite stories in order to determine their importance and popularity. With 25,594 fans (compared to McCain’s 3,545), the Obama campaign has had a significant influence over the stories that made headlines on Digg. The campaign was also more pro-active, making 99 submissions in contrast to the 14 by their Republican counterparts.

On Twitter, Obama has been continuously updating 108,268 ‘followers’ about his campaign. He has made a total of 248 updates. John McCain has only managed to gain 4,289 followers and make 25 updates. On Facebook, Barack has 2.3 million supporters compared with McCains 600,000. Finally, Obama has also outplayed McCain on MySpace, gaining four times as many supporters as him (794,720 to 205,070).

International opinion matters

Most of these networks operate on principles of democracy under which the videos, news or blogs rated highest make it to the frontpages. Obama’s army of Digg fans and YouTube subscribers ensure that his posts are well promoted and thus more readily available to undecided audiences.

Barack Obama is highly favored over his opponent by people in Europe and many other parts of the world. Many of them have taken part in the online campaign by supporting Barack on these social networks. Although this has given him a rather unfair advantage, his success can be mainly attributed to the incredible effort made by his campaign to engage young voters on the Internet.

Note: The data provided in this article is accurate as of 0330 GMT on October 29, 2007.

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