Wikipedia describes a bellwether as any entity in a given arena that serves to create or influence trends or to predict future happenings. In the United States, Missouri is often referred to as a bellwether because it has produced the same national outcome in every presidential election since 1904 – except in 1956 and our most recent 2008 election. But what about social media? Could Myspace, Facebook or Twitter become the new election bellwethers? As the graphs below will show, each of these sites displayed more supporters for Barack Obama before his win in last week’s election.
Facebook:
Myspace:
Twitter:
Could social media sites become the next election bellwethers? Or are they skewed towards the young and the liberal? What do you think?
These sites aren’t the new bellwethers, but they are indicative of a larger voting trend that may influence politics in the US for many years. The overwhelming affiliation to Obama is dependent on age, cultural sub-groups and the power of the crowd. It’s also reflective of the Obama campaign’s savvy use of social networking & media to reach into new communities and social groupings.
Comment by Kirsten on November 10, 2008 at 10:17 am
Excellent insights Kirsten! Thanks for your comments.
Comment by Chad Richards on November 10, 2008 at 10:20 am
WOW!!
Two words stand out to me here 1. Influence and 2. Predict – and on both of these fronts I can clearly see how Social Media can be and really is a Bellwether as it is defined. This is indeed exciting because in all of the history of Media I personally can not put my finger on any other media that has accomplished THESE two words – Influence and Predictability. This is HUGE! Television can influence – but can not be tracked – thus can not offer predictability, Radio the same, and I can go on but we get the point.
It is the ability to influence and give back data that can be used for prediction that gives Social Media a tremendous “leg up” . NOW this is MY question… Did the Obama Strategy team know this? Did they know they would indeed – not only redefine campaigning as we know or have known it – AND at the same time be the catalyst behind ushering in a new Bellwether? You cant call a dog a cat, and you can call a buffalo a giraffe – I say that to say this… Brilliant is just brilliant.
Vincent Hunt™
Comment by Vincent Hunt on November 10, 2008 at 11:32 am
While I think the numbers are skewed due to the young and liberal slightly, I would say there could be another factor that skews the numbers more. Many (if not most) large cities in the U.S. are considered liberal, and it could be a safe assumption to say that there are more social media users in large cities than in rural America (or more conservative areas). Just a thought to ponder.
Comment by Mark Juleen on November 10, 2008 at 9:32 pm
I can never follow up Vincent. Everything I was wanting to say is in Vincent’s comments.
@Vincent I feel that the Obama Strategy Team knew exactly what they were doing. The Obama Branding campaign was truly brilliant in all stages.
Brilliant.
Comment by Kyle Lacy on November 10, 2008 at 10:12 pm
I’m not ready to anoint social media as a bellwether just yet. However, the election of 2008 does show the true power the social media can bring to bear. I think the impact of 2008 will hasten the transformation of society from a traditional media to new and even more imaginative communications. When bloggers replace CNN and the crazy polls, we’ll say that social media has fully arrived
Obama most effectively harnessed the power of social media, and in doing so, freed himself from the constraints (McCain voters would say commitment) of public financing. He also raised 3 times as much money as McCain by tapping Internet sources which could be easily renewed. Ultimately, money is the true bellwether in politics.
The interesting irony of the Internet is that it helped raise the money to fund more traditional mass media which turned the election into a landslide. While activists used the web to spread their message, create a following, and raise money; it was the traditional media that turned the election. I find it hard to believe that Obama would have won a state like Indiana without the huge radio and television ad buys he was able to make in the last weeks of the campaign.
To me, the interesting thing to note will be how Internet-based media starts to replace traditional media outlets on the larger scale. We are already seeing newspapers becoming more and more irrelevant, but how far will it go? We’ll have to watch and see how the trends develop, but no doubt, social media changed the political landscape in 2008. And it looks to become the battleground of choice for political ideas for many years to come.
Comment by Dave on November 11, 2008 at 2:11 am
Chad, interesting theory ~ but I’m not yet a convert to the online-is-a-bellweather theory as of yet. Here’s why:
1) A bellweather is predictable and repeatable. This election happened to include a strong Democratic leaning (thanks in no small part to the GDubya shenanigans), a charismatic candidate who understood the power of the web, and the wildness of social media in a tremendous phase of discovery and growth. These factors are anything but repeatable, and we’ve yet to prove it’s repeatable.
2) Young & liberal comprises the majority of the web now, and a large number of Obama’s votes, but that doesn’t mean it will ALWAYS equal the predictor to the presidential election winner.
That being said, it doesn’t mean that the internet won’t develop into that type of bellweather. There’s something to be said for wisdom of the masses! But right now the social circles of the web are mostly made up of early adopters, it’s when Gram & Gramps are on Facebook that we’ll get a better understanding of the role the web will play in elections.
One thing I can guarantee – never again will a Presidential candidate NOT be on Twitter, MySpace, etc. Obama clearly showed the importance of this type of multi-channel campaigning and from now on it’s guaranteed to be a campaigning norm.
Comment by Jess Sanders on November 16, 2008 at 10:24 pm
A chicken and the egg thought, what came first 1. the twitter/facebook demographi like Obama first then decided to follow or 2. the twitter/facebook crowd followed Obama then liked him.
Do you know of any metrics that show the usage or other metrics of the followers of each. I would not be surprised if someone could create and run a script, create a bunch of random users that never use twitter and then make them followers of someone to run up their “following” count? That being said, it would be interesting to run the stats on the followers of person X and when they joined, when they last logged in, how often they reply etc. (all types of stats) to get an idea of the usage of followers, as well as how influential the followers are, and somehow rate the value of the followers of person X vs. person Y, it is possible that a person with 10 followers has a more influential group than someone with 100.
Sorry for the ramble, you had an interesting article and it spurred some metric thoughts.
Comment by Brian Longest on November 17, 2008 at 7:32 am