Online war key as presidential rivals do battle

The 2012 US presidential election campaign is being fought with tweets, hashtags, Facebook updates, and emails in a battle for digital supremacy.

Online war key as presidential rivals   do battle

President Barack Obama and Republican rival Mitt Romney are counting on the traditional strategies of speeches, rallies, and paid television ads to win the White House, but the online war is becoming a major factor.

“Shaking hands and all the traditional campaign stuff has not gone away,” said Alan Rosenblatt, a longtime political consultant who now heads social media for the Center for American Progress and CAP Action Fund. “You still must do it to win, but if you don’t have a complementary online strategy you can’t win either.”

Obama, who pioneered the use of social media for organising, fundraising, and communicating in his 2008 White House bid, began ramping up his digital campaign in 2011 with millions of online ads.

If the online space were the only measure, Obama would win in a landslide.

He has around 30.8 million “likes” on Facebook to 9.3 million for Romney. Obama has more than 20.8 million followers of his Twitter @barackobama to about 1.4 million for Romney’s @mittromney.

Obama’s YouTube channel has nearly 240,000 subscribers and more than 246 million video views, while Romney’s channel has a little under 23,700 subscribers and around 26 million video views.

The tech-savvy president also leads on other platforms such as Google+ and Pinterest.

It is difficult to quantify exactly how Facebook posts, tweets, and followers will translate into votes on Nov 6. But social media appears to be getting more people involved in the political dialogue.

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