Social media become key campaign tool in midterm elections

Students voting in the midterm election can expect more than just a knock on the door or a message in their voicemail as candidates flood social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter in an effort to engage young voters.

“Care Like Crazy” is the tagline of an ad campaign launched Oct. 2 by non-profit, non-partisan Rock the Vote. The campaign consists of television ads in five states with large student populations and high-profile races, as well as national ads on Facebook, YouTube and Hulu.

In North Carolina, the ads will target the Chapel Hill and Greenville areas.

Ashley Spillane, president of Rock the Vote, said the ads, part of a $250,000 media campaign, are attempting to increase turnout among young voters in this fall’s election. Just 23.5 percent of registered voters aged 18-29 in North Carolina voted in the 2010 midterms.

“There are hugely important issues on the ballot, up and down the ballot, in every state in the country — including North Carolina,” she said in an email.

Spillane said as the media landscape has shifted with the growing presence of social media, groups like Rock the Vote have invested resources into reaching young voters on these new platforms.

“Social media is crucial to engaging with young voters because of how many of them are active online. Ninety percent of millennials are active on the Internet, and more than 60 percent have wireless connectivity away from home,” she said.

Raffi Williams, deputy press secretary for the Republican National Committee, said the Republican Party aimed to boost its online presence after the Growth and Opportunity Project report, which analyzed the party’s performance in the 2012 election, found a “digital divide” between the GOP and Democratic Party.

Williams said the RNC recently launched a Facebook voter challenge, through which people can sign an online pledge to vote and challenge friends to do the same.

“You still have to do the traditional ways of reaching out to voters — phone calls, door knocking, events, rallies — but you also need to have a strong online presence too,” he said.

Rob Flaherty, the youth media director for the Democratic National Committee, said Democrats are also aware of the importance of social media in reaching out to the young voter bloc.

“It’s really just a matter of talking about the issues that matter to young people where they’re at,” he said.

Earlier this year, Flaherty said, the College Democrats of America launched a social media campaign using the Twitter hashtag #GOPandering criticizing Republican policies they felt were harmful to young people.

Michael Bitzer, a political science professor at Catawba College, said young voters are typically not reachable with traditional methods.

“It’s not a kind of two-way street. It’s still very much the campaign reaching out and hoping that voters react,” he said.

Susan MacManus, a government and international affairs professor at the University of South Florida, said social media campaigning offers parties a chance to broaden their outreach and include young people in all aspects of the campaign process.

“Increasingly, campaigns realize they have to have young people come in to do their social media — young to young, that’s what works,” she said.

This election cycle will reveal a clearer picture of the new role of social media in politics, MacManus added.

“We’re in a midterm election where turnout normally falls a lot, but this is the first election, I think, where we political scientists are going to be able to really look at whether social media can keep younger voter turnout at a nearly presidential election level.”

state@dailytarheel.com