If you were running for office...

[MoneyGuy]

Municipal elections are this fall throughout Alberta. The old way to campaign is to talk to as many people as possible, knocking on as many doors as you and your workers can get to. That's very difficult to do and I wonder how effective it is in an age when people may not read material left at their door, or answer their door. People are increasingly disliking the intrusion at their doors.

I'm interested in ideas about how to campain for political office in the computer age, and its effectiveness. Let's say that I'm doing some research for a project I'm working on. It's for a "friend." These questions:

How effective do you think it is to campaign by setting up a website, Facebook, Twitte, etc.?

How would you get people to your website, to follow you on Tritter, to read your Facebook info?

What other ideas do you have for campaigning electronically? What do you think would work?

I'm thinking maybe my "friend" should knock on some doors (maybe in selected areas) and do a couple of mail drops to every home in his area, also publishing some ads in the main local newspaper giving people the URL to his website. His campaign material would be on the website.

My "friend" wants to get away from door knocking for it's questionable effectiveness and try things that might be more effective in this age where younger folks are more tech savvy.

Ideas?

[frinkprof]

I'm no expert, but:

- Website is essential. Provide information about your campaign issues, brief biography about yourself, maybe add some blog posts focusing on certain issues and your thoughts on them as you go (give people a reason to check in on the site every now and again), provide a place for feedback (but probably not comments that are visible to other people), link to your twitter, facebook, and all other material

- I don't personally use Facebook, but I would set up a fan or group type page for that

- Twitter is a really good tool, but you have to use it properly. Since I'm familiar with the Calgary election and candidates, I'll provide some examples of good/bad use (in my opinion of course):

Good: http://twitter.com/harperonside
Pretty good: http://twitter.com/RicMcIver
Bad: http://twitter.com/Hughes4MayorYYC http://twitter.com/joeformayor

-Bloggers. There's often bloggers that will give their opinions on the election, candidates, etc. and sometimes do interviews with them. At the very least keep up with what they are saying, because a certain segment of the voters will be. You may want to contact some if they do interviews.

Here's a couple of the more prominent ones for Calgary: http://www.calgaryrants.com/ http://calgarypolitics.com/

Anyway, this is all just my opinion as to what is or could be important. Good luck.

[Nehkara]

I agree with fotze.

I think that face-to-face contact with a candidate is a very significant thing for voters. Possibly even moreso in the computer age because you get very few people coming to your door, so it may make an even bigger impact.

I will probably run in an election, because I have always been interested in politics, and long before I ever even think of actually doing it I know that the way to win votes is to meet as many people as humanly possible.

[frinkprof]

To add to my post above, I should also mention that I think door knocking, community meetings, social events are very important too.

[CMPunk]

[Antithesis]

I'd say that twitter and facebook would be essential additions to any campaign platform, along with traditional means of campaigning.

[Kybosh]

Plant as many seeds as possible then wait until the seeds grow into plants. Then you *&^$ the plant (municipally speaking of course).

[ken0042]

Yep, Fotze is bang on. There is no substitute for face to face.

However I wouldn't abandon Facebook et al. Just be sure to have somebody updating it regularly for you so that there is always fresh info on the page. That way people may subscribe to it, and then others get a notification that "20 of your friends are now fans of 'Fotze for Mayor.'"

[Slava]

The door knock is hands down the most effective campaign tool. It's cheap, let's you (or this friend you speak of) connect with voters and so on. More importantly though in identifies supporters and works toward the gotv that you will need come e-day.

A lot has been said about Obama and bow amazing his grassroots Internet campaign was, and it has it's merits. Don't overlook the fact the the bulk of his money wasn't raised on the Internet though; it is a smaller percentage.

I think that while the social media is needed I doubt it converts many would-be voters. I am very unlikely to vote for someone just because
my friends are fans of their facebook page or whatever. That wouldn't mean I wouldn't vote for them, but it's not a big deal to me.

On a more important note though, how many friends can an Oiler fan have anyway?!

[CaptainCrunch]

I think that the larger portion by a significant amount has to be face to face and public appearances.

I think if someone did the majority of their campaigning through Cyber-space my first thought was that this candidate was either hiding something, was unapproachable or had little confidence in his or her public persona.

I also think that a lot of people wouldn't care enough to got to a website or twitter or facebook, meeting people face to face can galvanize voters and allowing them a proper forum for discussing issues.

The technology is important as a tool that you can direct people to. But someone running a techno campaign is probably going to lose.

Don't forget that in an aging population, most old folks distrust people that rely too much on technology.

Plus people who twitter, just really annoying.

[Phaneuf3]

Originally Posted by frinkprof

- I don't personally use Facebook

You know who else didn't use facebook?
Hitler.

[frinkprof]

Originally Posted by Phaneuf3

You know who else didn't use facebook?
Hitler.

Of all the threads I thought might be Godwinned, this wasn't one.

[SebC]

Twitter. Nenshi's doing it right.

And on Thursday at about noon, Trendsmap.comidentified something interesting -- a local mayoralty candidate made the list of most popular Calgary trends, marking perhaps the first time a candidate has cracked that list.

http://www.calgaryherald.com/sports/...#ixzz0pQxkvzh2

[Slava]

How many votes is that worth come October?

I like Naheed but I do wonder if this is a case where he blows his brains out to get 3% of the vote? I've seen some polling and it's not pretty.

[octothorp]

A kick-ass pancake breakfast is an absolute must. And yeah, face-to-face contact is a must, especially in municiple elections where low voter turn-out means that a small number of committed voters can be more effective than a large number of apathetic voters. That said, I can see how facebook and twitter have a role to play: with twitter in particular, make sure that you're saying interesting, meaningful things. Just describing your activities isn't going to be as effective as actually saying interesting things about the issues. I can also see social media as effective during 'get out the vote' drives. I might look through material delivered to my door, but I find that typical mail-outs are pretty short on information. Don't write a long letter, but don't just have your face and your slogan.