January 23, 2007

Local Politics in a YouTube World

Mike Chapman at Blogabilities reports on how a small group of students at Texas State University in San Marcos used social media to upend the established political order in Hays County, Texas.

The group's tactics included using MySpace and Facebook pages to create online communities to educate students on issues directly affecting them. Then using traditional GOTV (Get Out the Vote) methods, only modernized to target cell phones and incorporating mass text messaging, they made sure everyone knew when, how, and where to vote for their candidates.

The young consulting team was so successful that several key races - including the county-wide Criminal District Attorney race, which was decided by only 13 votes out of nearly 30,000 cast - swung toward the student-represented candidate. This may be a trend that the national parties ignore at their own peril.

Hays County, which had been trending solidly Republican for more than a decade, went from four Republicans and one Democrat on the County Commissioners Court (the governing body for county governments in Texas) to four Democrats and one Republican. The only county-wide position on the county court went from Republican to Democrat.

Political professionals have long tried to factor students into their election strategies. With social media coming of age, and with students being particularly heavy users of new technologies and trends, capturing the college-student vote may be more important than ever. If students across the nation are even close to replicating the work at Texas State, any politician with a clue about getting elected will be paying close attention. It may do them well to study up on the issues important to students going into 2008.