I've Been Thinking About This…

Can’t believe I’m writing this! I’m no political analyst. But something I’ve just seen has struck me – and it looks so obvious in retrospect that I’m writing this, my first ever (and probably last) political commentary.

I’m not a particularly savvy person, but I noticed that both Obama and McCain used Twitter in their campaigns. I went to their Twitter pages to see their connections and such. Here’s what I found, looking only at the top page of each (the top page shows the latest 20 Twitter messages -

here’s McCain’s (click to enlarge)

and here’s Obama’s ).

Obama was communicating about 3 times as frequently as McCain

McCain stopped broadcasting on October 24 (11 days before the election) – his last 20 Twitters cover Sept 27 through October 24 … 28 days, or an average of about 0.7 Twitters per day. On the other hand, Obama stopped broadcasting on November 5 (the day after the election) – his last 20 Twitters cover October 27 through November 5 … 10 days, or an average of 2 Twitters per day.

The content is decidedly different

These last 20 Twitters break down as follows:

McCain: campaign info: 9; attack: 9; complaints: 2; references to opponents: 6.

Obama: campaign info: 16; attack: 0; complaints: 0; references to opponents: 0; 4 appeals, mostly to vote; 1 “thank you” at the end.

Across the whole campaign, Obama was Twittering 12 times as long as McCain and at about the same rate overall

McCain started using Twitter: Sept 19 … 46 days before the election, while Obama started using Twitter on April 29, 2007 … 555 days before the election!

Total Twitters throughout McCain’s campaign: 25, compared to 263 total Twitters throughout Obama’s campaign.

Obama built up a following more than 25 times the size of McCain’s

People following McCain: 4,863 – while a massive 130,340 people followed Obama.

My rough interpretation

1. Obama’s team understood the value of this technology early on in the run-up; McCain’s team did not. They both have nice web sites, but having a good web site was the “we’re impressive” thing to do back in 1996 – it’s de rigueur now. One of the ‘in’ technologies in the past couple of years has been Twitter. Obama’s team recognized it very early on; McCain’s team took nearly 17 months to catch on.
2. Cost of reaction vs action: time spent telling people how bad your opponent is is time and opportunity lost telling them how good you are. In a race that focuses so much on personality, it’s rarely useful to point to the other person for any reason.
3. Recall that toward the end of the 1996 election, Dole finally gave in to his advisors who had been recommending that he attack Clinton on character. It was a significant (and very noticed) volte-face. On the other hand, Clinton stopped most attacks, and came off looking like the gentleman politician. The impact was that the attacks hurt Dole a great deal more than Clinton. The public gets very tired of constant mud-slinging and wingeing. McCain’s team did not seem to have learnt this lesson. Again, toward the end, Obama’s team stayed relatively clean here, and he came across as the ‘bigger man’. Perception and name retention are everything in trying to sway voters at this late point in a campaign, so McCain’s team were in effect campaigning for Obama at this point.

The above clearly isn’t the single determining factor – or even necessarily a main reason – of who won and who lost. But it might well be symptomatic.

</politics>!

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