Politics and Elections Blog
Trends, tools and news from the Google Politics & Elections team
Exploring the Digital Election
Wednesday, December 12, 2012
Last week, Google and CNN hosted 300 campaign operatives and journalists to discuss how political campaigns broke new ground in 2012 using the internet to fundraise, persuade, and mobilize with unprecedented targeting and measurement. The "Exploring the Digital Election" panels featured Andrew Bleeker, Digital Director for Obama for America, Zac Moffatt, Digital Director for Romney for President, as well as representatives from Facebook, Twitter, leading US pollsters and political journalists.
Posted by the Google Politics & Elections Team
Digital Lessons Learned from 2012
Monday, December 10, 2012
Posted by: Rob Saliterman (R Team), Evan Rowe (D Team) and Luke Rodehorst (IE Team) Google Politics and Elections Team
Last week, Google and CNN convened more than 300 campaign operatives and journalists to discuss how political campaigns broke new ground this year in using the internet to fundraise, persuade, and mobilize with unprecedented targeting and measurement. The event, “
Exploring the 2012 Digital Election
,” featured the Obama and Romney campaigns’ digital masterminds, but it’s important to also recognize the innovative strategies and tactics of down-ballot campaigns and issue advocacy groups.
Google’s “
Digital Compilation from the 2012 Campaign Cycle” booklet
contains eight case studies on how the internet has revolutionized politics.
Here are four key examples from groups that set a new standard in online political advertising:
1. Delivering Maverick PAC’s Message to the Right Audience
Maverick PAC, led by Co-Chairs George P. Bush and Jay Zeidman, is engaging next generation Republican leaders from business, politics and law to build a national network. To gain traction with a younger audience and maximize visibility, Maverick PAC turned to YouTube to tell their story. By partnering with Story Partners -- a DC public affairs firm -- they maximized the exposure to the target audiences.
Read the full case study here
.
2. Ami Bera went up early to avoid the noise and define the candidates
Dr. Ami Bera ran for Congress in 2010, losing a close race in the Sacramento suburbs. In 2012, with voters inundated with messages from dozens of candidates and ballot propositions, as well as statewide redistricting, guaranteed a tighter race. But in an area with many competitive races and proposition campaigns, the Bera campaign knew traditional media alone would be insufficient to communicate with voters effectively. So they turned to digital to extend the reach and frequency of their offline ads and reach key audiences efficiently.
Read the full case study here
.
3. Click-to-Call-Congress
As the U.S. Senate considered legislation critical to the clean coal industry this spring, the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE) sought ways to mobilize grassroots supporters of the legislation across the country to make their voices heard. Partnering with social media marketing firm New Media Strategies, ACCCE used numerous Google tools, including click-to-call mobile advertising, to connect constituents with their Senators.
Read the full case study here
.
4. Extending the Reach of TV with a complimentary online video strategy on YouTube
Priorities USA Action, the leading Super PAC in support of President Barack Obama, turned to online ads in order to outmaneuver their better-funded opponents: Republican Super PACs American Crossroads, Crossroads GPS, and Restore Our Future. Working closely with agency Global Strategy Group, Priorities developed an efficient and effective YouTube video and Google search strategy to re-elect the President of the United States.
Read the full case study here
.
New study: Voters tuning in earlier, find Internet the most reliable for candidate info
Wednesday, December 5, 2012
Cross-Posted by
Karl Agne, Founding Partner GBA Strategies
and
Robert Blizzard, VP Public Opinion Strategies
[From time to time we invite guests to blog about initiatives of interest, and are very pleased to have Karl Agne of GBA Strategies and Robert Blizzard of Public Opinion Strategies join us here. – Ed.]
New post-election research conducted by GBA Strategies and Public Opinion Strategies in Colorado -- a critical swing state in 2012 and 2014 -- contains several key lessons for those seeking to understand not just what happened in 2012, but what this election means for 2014 and beyond. First, the traditional campaign timeline for communicating with voters - slowly building communications volume and television point levels to reach a crescendo in the final weeks of the campaign - is history. This research examined not just when voters tuned in to the campaign, but also when they tuned out. The lesson - voter engagement peaks in September and early October; by the final week of the campaign, more than 1-in-3 voters have stopped following congressional campaigns completely.
Of course, persuadable voters still break much later, forcing campaigns to weigh the relative importance of turnout messages geared toward base voters with persuasion targeted to a much smaller (but often decisive) universe of swing voters who engage in the campaign much later, make their voting decisions much later, and wait much longer to vote. And that leads to inevitable questions of how to reach these very different groups of voters in the most effective and efficient manner possible. Increasingly, campaigns are turning to online tools to answer those questions. This poll shows that voters now identify the Internet as the most reliable source of information for learning about the candidates in a congressional campaign and gathering the information they need to make their decision.
Learn more about this new study and
read the memo here
.
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