The short answer, from a fresh look at some of the evidence, is yes – but probably not as much as some of the Web boosters have been claiming.
A study of this year’s US primary campaign by the Fox School of Business at Temple University concludes that the internet has opened the political field to new entrants who would not have got a look in otherwise (the invaluable TechPresident points to this research today, and also supplies a password to access the research – “templeowls”.) The study also claims to find a correlation between ideas being promoted in the blogosphere and the results of opinion surveys, suggesting that bloggers help to shape broader public opinion.
However, it is difficult to say what is cause and what is effect here (as the researchers themselves admit.) Also, they failed to find much direct evidence that other forms of online communication or behaviour, like exchanging ideas on social networks or watching YouTube, had an impact during the primaries.
Meanwhile, the Campaign Finance Institute has had a closer look at the financing of the Presidential campaign and concluded that in at least one important respect, President-elect Obama’s vaunted internet money-machine was not quite as impressive as it might have appeared (this piece in The Atlantic remains the best description of how the Obama campaign turned to the Web to build its network of supporters and donors.)
The received wisdom has been that a massive network of individual donors fuelled the Obama victory. Some 49 per cent of the money raised by the campaign came in donations of less than $200.
But it turns out this is not the whole picture. According to the CFI’s latest analysis, many people gave more than once. As a result, only 26 per cent of the money came from actual donors who gave less than $200 in total – not so different from the 21 per cent for the McCain campaign, or the 25 per cent for George W Bush in 2004.
