The Obama campaign is using digital tools to talk directly with voters at almost four times the rate of the Romney campaign, according to a new study by the Pew Research Center. The tools, now also in widespread use at automakers, bypass the filters and biases of traditional media coverage of politics.
However, the latest electronic communications techniques are also largely a one-way street as campaigns (and automakers) talk at but rarely share or forward responses, long a complaint of traditional media critics.
The Pew report, which analyzed the content and volume of candidate communications on their websites and social media channels in June claims that the digital gap between the campaigns was the greatest on Twitter. The Romney campaign averaged 1 tweet per day while the Obama campaign averaged 29 tweets, 17 per day on @BarackObama (the Twitter presidency account) and 12 on @Obama2012 (the campaign account). Obama also had about twice as many blog posts on his campaign website than did Romney and more than twice as many YouTube videos.
The study also found that while both campaigns’ digital content primarily focused on their own candidate, roughly a third of the posts from the Romney campaign were about Obama—largely attacking him for a policy stance or action. About half as many of the Obama campaign’s posts, 14%, focused on his challenger during the period studied.
“While more digital activity does not necessarily translate into more votes, historically candidates who are first to exploit changing technology have an advantage,” said Pew Director Tom Rosenstiel. “From Roosevelt to Reagan, presidential candidates have used the way they communicate to suggest that they understand how the country is changing.”
This is the fourth presidential election cycle in which Pew has examined the content of the digital campaign. This year, it broadened its analysis to include examination of content posted on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, as well as blog posts and material featured on homepages of the campaign web sites.
Among other findings:
- 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.
- Other issues – such as immigration and health care – were far more likely to spur re-sharing by their digital audience. Obama’s posts about the economy generated an average of 361 shares or re-tweets. His posts about immigration, by comparison, generated more than four times that, and women’s and veteran’s issues generated more than three times the reaction. This was also true of Romney’s messaging. His posts on health care and veterans averaged almost twice the response per post of his economic messages.
- The web is a one-way street. Neither candidate offered much sharing or re-tweeting of its followers’ messages. Pew said that if the internet offers the promise of making campaigns more of a two-way conversation with citizens, the candidates are not participating. For example, just 16% of Obama’s tweets over the two-week period studied were re-tweets. The Romney campaign had just one re-tweet during this period – something from Romney’s son Josh.
- Obama’s digital strategy targets specific voter groups to a greater degree than Romney’s. Visitors to Obama’s website are offered opportunities to join 18 different constituency groups, among them African-Americans, women, LGBT, Latinos, veterans/military families or young Americans. If a visitor clicks to join a group, they then receive content targeted to that constituency. The Romney campaign offered no such groups at the time of this study. It has since added feature pages for nine groups, although users can still only join the general “Team Romney” rather than the particular voter group.
