US Presidential Election with 11 weeks to go and Obama is well ahead on Social Media.

The first real "new media" TV debate was on Television in 1960 between JFK and Nixon. It wasn't about the content, it was about the way Nixon appeared visually that decided it, (sweaty and uneasy because he wasn't used to TV - earning the nickname "Tricky Dicky"). It is long, but well worth the watch when you've time.

The current Presidential race will also be about "new media" but this time it's Social and Obama has outpaced Romney in Social Media.

He has 10m Twitter followers compared to Romney's 895,000 on @barackobama and @obama2012. Obamas campaign tweets 29 times a day compared to Romney's one. On Facebook Obama has 7 times more fans at 28m Versus 4m - 7 times. On YouTube it's the same story at 839,000 versus 399,000. Obama is winning the Social Media debate by a mile.

Yet, he's only ahead in the polls by 3%.

However, both candidates tend not to use Social in an "engaging" way, using it simply to push messages out - rather than engage with voters and comments. In a way, using Social Media as almost an old fashioned media buy. It's not a two-way street.


"Campaigns are using technology to push out their own message rather than engaging in the social aspect," says Amy Mitchell, deputy director of the Pew Research Centre's Project for Excellence in Journalism as quoted by BBC.

"Social can be hugely effective at relationship building. But when you're Romney and Obama, if they did treat social as a two-way channel I think they'd be so inundated," says Paul Ten Haken, president at Click Rain, a multimedia firm.

So there's a balance between pushing out stuff and engaging....whilst we all know that engagement wins every time, it takes up a lot of time and especially for candidates "on the road".

"Both candidates' digital campaigns have focused on the economy more than any other issue; 24% of all Romney posts and 19% of Obama posts were about the economy. However, the campaigns differed in the angle they stressed. The Romney campaign devoted nearly twice the attention to jobs in its posts- 14% of posts compared to 8% of posts from the Obama campaign. Obama's economic messages were almost equally divided between jobs and broader economic issues, such as the importance of the middle class" according to their new survey at The Pew Research Centre.

So whilst Obama's campaign has used Social better in numbers, and whilst neither are using it in an engaging way, messages about the economy seem to be the most used.

The 57th Presidential Election will be held on November 6th.


The Republican National Convention takes place August 27-30 and The Democratic Party are on September 3-6. October then becomes the real hectic month with the first Presidential debate on October 3rd.

December 17th the President is declared formally elected and inauguration day is Jan 20th.

This will be an election driven by Social Media and with relatively little time to go (two months in reality) and Obama so far ahead, it will be interesting to see if he wins. Does the man with more Social Media become President?

I would think so.