Technology And The Young Voter

Political fundraising is just one avenue on the road to winning an office and I would be remiss not to jump on the band wagon of commentators reflecting on last week’s presidential debate.As a member of the largest Republican fundraising platform I can hardly say that I am unbiased, however in this circumstance there is not much controversy over which candidate was the stand out presenter. Keeping that in mind, I would like to pose these questions:

• could the addition of social media and real time commentaries on the televised debates be changing the voter demographic?
• With public opinion polls, Facebook pages, Tweets, and public rallies, are the debates of yesteryear still a valuable contribution for the voters to determine who should occupy the Oval Office come November?

Technology seems to continually add new dimensions to every aspect of the campaign trail. Microsoft published interesting statistics based on its Xbox Live viewing audience. During the debate, the software company posted ten questions to its viewers and had surprising results.

• 88% of people who voted in polls during the debate were ‘likely voters’ and 69% said that they will ‘definitely talk’ to their social network about their position on the election,
• 11% of users who voted in the polls identified themselves as undecided voters,
• 17% said they were leaning toward either Romney or Obama specifically,
• 9 out of 10 times, Romney exceeded his baseline support,
• 8 out of 10 times, Obama fell below his baseline support.

Social media is seemingly playing a larger role in the political stratosphere as real time comments and discussions can be expressed in the cyber world. With this influx of tech savvy voters, I can’t help but speculate that we have a new generation of voters that candidates must appeal to. New life seems to be injected into the political interests of the under 35 crowd as politics has become newly accessible to this demographic through Facebook and Twitter.While Wednesday’s debate wasn’t the most watched in history, it was the most Tweeted political event by far. 10.3 million Tweets were generated in during the 90 minute discussion and the famous Big Bird comment alone produced a quarter million quips.In 2008, 66% of all voters under the age of 30 voted for President Obama. Furthermore, the average voter age in the previous presidential election was 44 years old. It will be crucial to the Republican Party to address this new aspect of politicking by addressing the younger crowd.