The presidential election of 2008 has seen an energized voter participation greater than any in the last forty years. There are any number of reasons for this, including low approval of the current administration, three wars, the sentiment that the country is going in the wrong direction, the crash of the financial markets, and the housing mortgage mess. There are probably other reasons, but together they created a “perfect storm” of desire for change among voters.
Without dismissing the importance of this historic election, looking to the future of governance provides some interesting new insights. Of particular interest to me was the drive to register new voters, particularly young first-time voters. This was done on a grand scale by the democrats and lesser so by the republicans, but both parties attempted to add to their constituents through strong get out the vote efforts. While the actual voting record of young people was less than perfect, it improved considerably over that of previous modern elections. Does this mean anything for the future? I’m thinking ahead three or four election cycles when the twenty-somethings who voted in this election are now in their mid thirties. I would suggest that they will be the core of an informed electorate. Why? Because they will have been trained in their participation in this election.
The young people who voted in this election are computer literate and net connected. This has wide implications for public discourse. No longer has any one medium the ability to control the content of what is presented to potential voters. This is perhaps the reason that the negative fear and smear tactics failed this election cycle. People accustomed to looking at different sources of information aren’t easily deceived. The ability to look at various fact-checking websites, blogs, etc. makes it far more difficult for any one source of information to deceive voters with lies and innuendo. The internet has killed “swift boating” as a tactic. It no longer is effective because those eighteen year olds no longer have to rely on one or two sources to gather information.
The upshot of this should be instructional for all politicians and their campaign apparatus. Talk about real issues, don’t conflate differences. In short, politicians can spell out REAL differences, but obvious lies and exaggerations will no longer work, and may backfire on those who choose to attempt to deceive the voters.
The election of 2008 has created a new voter. This voter isn’t one who can be fooled by the old political ways of doing business. They will carry this experience into each and every election they participate in for the rest of their lives, and they will teach it to their children.
Politicians beware. The electorate is no longer asleep.
The pendulum swings both ways. You could have written almost the same thing in 1992 when Clinton got elected with a Democratic majority in the congress. Remember 1994?
Also, the young first time voter grows up. Today’s young liberal is tommorrows middle age conservative.
Look, here’s some new thing! It’s already been done, and there’s nothing new under the sun. ~Ecclesiastes~
I agree that there has been a passing of the guard here. The first post-Baby Boomer is taking over the White House and I must say that it’s really striking and appropo that he looks different from all presidents before him. And the post mortems on the election will take a while, but I agree that we’ll see how the Internet at the grass roots level and campaign management by IT was fundamentally a change this time. Obama’s team knew how to use all of that to their advantage and, in fact, were instrumental in creating several innovations, like using their online social networking capacity to get funding and using YouTube & other web sites to get out their own messages and handle right away the smears from the other side. They also developed a tracking database of volunteers who were finding and registering new voters that could compare the results from those new voters actually going to the polls on election day.
I think the Republicans will follow the Dem’s lead and improve in the online area over the next several years, but I also think they’ve cooked their goose for a while by giving too much sway to the radical elements of their party. Obama’s campaign strategy was to put resources and enough people on the ground all 50 states. The other side had to rely on Rove’s 51%, which was always a ridiculously short-term strategy that required cobbling together a very shaky base with core elements that were fundamentally incompatible, like social conservatives right wing religious sorts who don’t really care about big spending as long as Roe v. Wade goes and no gay marriage (aka “Palinites”), alongside Grover Norquist’s nutjob ‘drown government in the bathtub’ contingent.
You may be a little short-sided. The technology used in this election was but barely visible in the early ninetys. Youtube didn’t even exist until 2005. The number of possible information venues has grown exponentially even since the 2004 election.
The issue of conservative or liberal doesn’t enter in to this. The emphasis is on the ability to have multiple sources of information that prevents a politician or political party from making unsupportable claims or statements. The availability of the internet will only grow over the next few election cycles as well as the sophistication of the organizing efforts.
Ingenium,
Yeah, the republicans have a dilemma. The technology available to the voters almost force the political parties to move toward center in order to appeal to all demographics. This means abandoning the extreme factions - conservative or liberal. A “base” of minority idealogs is a sure loser. It will be interesting to see if they can manage to find that center or if they choose to remain an ephemeral regional party.
A bit of a followup story… mcclatchydc.com/227/story/55350.html The power of the internet as a political tool is just beginning to be explored. Getting the american people involved in politics from the grassroots up is taking on a new dimension…
You seem to be willfully obviating the most apparent detraction to your theorisation; “the American public” …
Literacy is down 18%, high school graduates down 8-10% nationally.
Economy is sinking, down 38% so far and going for the bottom.
Unemployment rising … the Big 3 bailout is meaningless, they’ll use it as the final excuse to wipeout all industry here and move it to Mexico/South America so the upper 5% can keep their private plane/limo’s lifestyle.
Jerry Springer is still considered “informative” to one third of America’s population.
Being computer literate and net connected doesn’t mean that you are “accustomed to looking at different sources of information”, access to fact-checking resources doesn’t entail their usage, and being more interested in politics doesn’t necessarily make young people more informed. From what I’ve seen, most of the young people who voted for Obama don’t have any idea why they did. It’s like an audience participation game show to them, they picked him because he’s young and cool, and Mccain is old and tired, and now they’re glad that their guy won. The public was prodded into voting by media sensationalism and Maddenesque election commentary, that together made deciding the future of America look more like the Superbowl, and though in my opinion the choice made was correct, that doesn’t indicate that it was any more well-informed or considered than was the choice to elect George W. Bush Jr.