Why the Democrats’ Web Strategy Will Help Them Win

The Obama-Romney Match

In 2008, Obama’s camp had redesigned the 21st-century campaign: “digital” was the magic word. The instrumental use of the Internet to promote the Democratic candidate, spread his message and, of course, collect donations was one of the keys to his quite successful campaign.

Yet, four years later, his 2008 YouTube videos and Facebook account seem almost prehistoric. Obama’s 2012 war machine is higher (in numbers amassed), quicker (more Internet activity) and stronger (more web goals reached). Spreading the message over and over is the principle of sharing viral information; Obama’s camp understands this well.

The data campaign

The latest proof to date: He announced on Twitter that he would vote 12 days before the election (a characteristic of the American electoral system). This is better than a press communique and is now also taken up by the media. His wife, Michelle Obama, also announced her early vote via her Twitter account.

Why? Because post-2008, the roles of Twitter, Tumblr and other social networking sites, such as Google+, have been reinforced. And they work. But where the engineering techies in Chicago (Obama for America’s headquarters, where nearly 100 campaign strategy geeks congregate) excel is in targeting voters.

Nothing escapes the web developers, data analysts and former hackers, whether it’s sex, age or demographic group, each voter category already has its own Internet site, like “Latinos for Obama,” “Young Americans for Obama,” “Women for Obama” (with a variety of online activities like “The Life of Julia,” in which female voters evaluate their lives under a Obama and Romney presidency). But the technological novelties perfected by this geek squad constitute a tremendously effective data strategy. A short practical review:

Step 1: Microtargeting. It’s 2012’s Big Thing with, one must add, a little bit of “Big Brother.” Whether you like a message Obama posted on Facebook, open one of the personalized messages in your inbox, send a donation (even three or five dollars) or tweet an anti-Romney message, they’ve got you! You’ll be asked to contribute several times a week (this has been tested for months) and you’ll receive targeted messages. Why? Because thanks to you, they know who you are!

Step 2: Recruit! As soon as you identify yourself (young white male, for example) you become a campaign player. With your vote they can get your friends’, colleagues’ and cousins’ votes, which is even better! The campaign teams put you to work: for example, organizing meetings with your neighbors face to face so you can listen to them and explain how Obama understands them and can respond better than Romney to their needs and problems. This is the mission of field director Jeremy Bird.

Step 3: Geolocalization. The teams collect and cross all of this precious information to literally tele-guide the field teams to more and more specific targets: If this neighborhood or that street hasn’t been addressed by a phone call, towing or door-to-door it is necessary to send someone there!

Under The Dashboard project creator Harper Reed’s ambition, it’s clearly a competition between volunteers who play hard: Each team member can see how many neighbors he’s met, how many phone calls he’s made, all in real time. He can also compare himself to other volunteers (all this info, of course, is open at the headquarters). Other data revealed: how much money a person collects. The September figures have come in: $180 million collected in one month. 98 percent were small donations, or less than $250 (in 2012 half of the donations were less than $200) — mission accomplished!

Meanwhile, in Romney’s Camp….

Obama’s campaign spokesman, Ben LaBolt, confided in March that “We are building the largest grassroots campaign in history on the ground.” The Republicans resist despite their 2008 weakness: McCain’s lack of web presence was painfully noted. It is only in a rather amusing manner, thanks to the free thinkers on the party’s margins, that Republicans have arrived there at all: the tea party took steps online to increase its rallying power and its field organizational skills since 2009.

The Republicans are always a little late: Romney’s webpage wasn’t entirely translated into Spanish before the summer (Obama’s has always been bilingual). And a typo — “a better Amercia” — on Romney’s mobile app hasn’t really been forgiven.

Mitt Romney has 9.5 million Facebook fans (Obama has nearly 31 million), and Romney’s tiny band of one million Twitter followers remains 20 times less than Obama! But Romney too is surrounded by techie gurus; his East Coast digital plan is thanks to 32-year-old Zac Moffat.

Collecting donations, social networks and different apps are easily done, but these techies also know that there are the challenges on this terrain and that in fact this digital operation has faced and reached heights never seen in a campaign. Romney keeps the faith, conscious of his network’s strength from rank-and-file activists (and not only from the tea party) to the big donors as well, a terrain where he scores: his big fundraising events schedule is quite busy for the weeks ahead.