Washington: When Melanie Aranda became the Texas coordinator for the Students for Barack Obama presidential campaign last year, one of the first places she went to drum up support was Facebook.com.
"I knew it was going to be the best way possible to get young students organised because everyone is on Facebook or MySpace," said Aranda, a December 2007 graduate of Texas State University.
She started the Facebook group "Texas Students for Barack Obama", which now boasts more than 600 members. Though she originally had mixed responses to the group, she said the ability to create events and send messages over the social network to remind people about Obama fund-raising events or speeches helped to mobilise and organise young voters.
"It was easier for us to get the word out so that we were a visible part of his campaign stops," she said.
According to Rock the Vote, a non-profit youth voter advocacy group, more than five times as many Texans ages 18-29 voted in the 2008 Democratic primaries than the 2004 primaries, with a solid majority voting for Obama.
That enthusiasm for Obama on social networks and the internet has carried on to the general election. Obama now has more than 1 million supporters on Facebook, while Republican nominee John McCain has slightly more than 150,000 supporters, which is still fewer than former Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.
That disparity on social networks is just a part of the contrast in emphasis by the two campaigns on internet organisation and fund-raising.
Ryan Vartoogian, president of Spartan Internet Consulting, which started an index in July 2007 on how well the presidential candidates are using the internet, said Obama has consistently been able to fund-raise, organise and network online more than any other candidate. According to the index, Obama's online presence has been higher than McCain's by at least 15 per cent since July 2007, and recently, Obama has dramatically widened that gap.
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| This article on the national political campaigns in the United States is from The New York Times. It was specially selected and prepared by the editors of The New York Times News Service. |
