What Dean, Obama, Palin and Brown Have In Common

2010 is the year – from this point on, any candidate running for political office must have a social networking strategy if they want to win.

The lead up to election day in Massachusetts was noisy and exciting for people who like to follow such things.  The margin narrowed quickly.  Polls kept shiftng. As the the big day dawned, the White House knew that Coakley was in trouble.

For those of us following the race on Twitter, it was clear who was going to win. What?  How?  For a full week before election day,  anybody following the “Coakley” timeline on Twitter will have seen that tweets against her far outweighed tweets in her favor.

A search on YouTube was revealing as well.  A search for “”scottbrown” yields links to videos with positive headlines:

• Wow! Republican Scott Brown Has AWESOME Interview with Sean Hannity
• Scott Brown visits ZOLL Medical Corp.
• Scott Brown Has the Power: SuperNews!

While  a search for “coakley” resulted in these top three headlines:

• Coakley Thug Roughs Up Reporter
• Coakley staffer knocks Weekly Standard reporter to ground
• Martha Coakley Thug Instigates Assault on John McCormack: Full Clip

Roll back to 2004 – the presidential primary campaigns are in full swing, and the darling of the Democrats is Howard Dean – why? Because of everybody out there, he was the one that leveraged the Internet’s ability to directly connect with people.   Even though his over-the-top enthusiasm derailed his campaign, nobody can deny that, of all the candidates at the time, he was the only one that recognized the untapped potential of the internet.

Then comes 2008. Regardless of which side of the political fence you are on, recognition must be given to the effective campaign that the Obama team conducted.   And, prominent in that successful campaign was the use of social media channels to reach people.  He had help and lots of it.  Chris Hughes, Facebook co-founder, left Facebook to join Obama’s campaign. He helped develop the website,  and pages on Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and other niche services.  The Obama campaign also effectively used the internet for fundraising, taking a lesson from Howard Dean’s playbook.

That brings us to Sarah Palin.  Since leaving office as the Governor of Alaska, she has been making news left and right.  More than once, a single post to her Facebook page has resulted in copious amounts of discussion on TV, radio, online and in newspapers. She has 1.2MM fans and understands the unprecedented opportunity social media presents,and the power of direct two-way communication with people.

On January 14, 2010, the Wordstream blog correctly predicted that Scott Brown would “trounce” Martha Coakley, based on available data from Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and other internet sources.  Two days, later, the Boston Globe ran an article citing traditional poll results, predictably showing Brown ahead in the conservative polls, and Coakley ahead in the liberal polls.

On January 21,  Blogger Larry Kim posted an excellent article on Search Engine Journal, summarizing the space that social networking polling has carved out for itself going forward.    Social networking has permanently upended politics and the way campaigns are measured.

Conclusion

Even with a social media strategy, candidates have to have a compelling message. As the 2010 “silly season” heats up,  it will be interesting to see which candidates capitalize on this powerful channel.

What have you observed about politics and politicians in the social networking arena? Are your state or local politicans out there?