I Guess This Town Is Big Enough For the Two Of Us

I heard on NPR’s All Things Considered that President Obama is no longer king among the who’s who of online campaigning. A new report from Pew Internet claims that Republicans, Tea-Partiers and others have filled the gap. Democrats (circa 2008 election) used to have a clear advantage over Republicans in the online arena, but the Pew study claims that there has been a power shift and the former disparity has been wiped out and replaced with a level playing field. There are probably many reasons for this, but NPR points out two: (1) back when President Obama was Candidate Obama, he was utilizing tools that the rest of “us” had yet to completely get on board with. Now that more people are online and becoming increasingly comfortable using social networking sites and the like, it’s not a surprise that campaigns from every side are reaching their base using the same tactics; (2) apparently being President is boring. A lot of the information that comes out of the White House is “real stuff” and isn’t all about rallying the troops. This is admirable, but President Obama has lost some of the online community.

With this report in mind, I decided to do a little case study. I picked a race from The Fix’s 10 best races of 2011 (Indianapolis Mayor: Greg Ballard, Republican incumbent versus Melina Kennedy, Democrat) and decided to compare the website home pages of the Democratic and Republican candidates. Here are the two screen shots:

I realize that this is the most basic of comparisons and definitely not scientific, but I think it gives us a good idea about what is becoming the norm. Colin Delany’s Online Politics 101 outlines some of the must-haves for campaign websites, so I kept those in mind when reviewing. Each website easily fulfills its duty of being the campaign’s online headquarters. Links to Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, etc. are easily found on the homepage; however, the websites were missing an RSS feed, which as Delany points out, is extremely easy to set up and must be included.

Bottom line: I agree that Republicans et al have closed the online gap, but I think it’s more likely a function of more and more people getting on board than it is about President Obama’s failure to maintain his online prestige.