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US television networks face a new challenge in covering this year's excruciatingly close presidential election: prevent closely guarded exit poll results from leaking onto Twitter, Facebook and other social media platforms.
The major TV news networks agreed to shield early exit poll data suggesting who is leading in a state until the state's polls close. That means no tweeting exit polls, posting on Facebook, or re-tweeting figures reported by others. Election officials worry that leaks could discourage people from voting if they think the race in their state is already decided, depressing the vote count and distorting the results. In 1985, Congress extracted a promise from the major TV networks to refrain from using exit polls to project a winner in a particular state, or to characterize who is leading, while voting continues in that area.
Major TV News Networks Agree To Shield Early Exit Poll Data On Election Day
Security experts warned that New Jersey's plan for e-mail-based voting was a recipe for problems, and anecdotal evidence is starting to trickle in that the system isn't working as well as organizers had hoped.
One address used to request ballots was not even accepting e-mail late Tuesday morning. And in another county, an election official responded to problems with the county e-mail system by inviting voters to send ballot requests to his personal Hotmail address. The unfolding fiasco was first spotted by Buzzfeed, which notes that a number of voters have tweeted about having their e-mails to county voting officials bounce. "Oh no! email box for Essex County Clerk's box is full. No one can email in their ballots," tweeted one New Jersey voter last night. Essex County, NJ, is in the suburbs of New York and has nearly 800,000 residents. As one of the largest counties in the state, it is evidently struggling to keep up with the demand for e-mail ballots.
E-voting chaos: NJ voters sent to official's personal Hotmail address Yep, There Have Been Problems With Email Voting in New Jersey (WSJ) Concerns raised over New Jersey’s e-mail and fax ballots (WashPost)
Lots of things are done online, so why not voting? The technology isn't there yet for secure, online voting, computer security experts said. Between intercepted communications, the difficulty in verifying identity, and danger from hackers bent on disrupting the whole process, there are simply too many problems for online voting to be considered a viable option, the speakers said.
Online Voting Isn't Ready, Says Panel
Social media is a significant part of the process by which voters are talking about their ballot selections, especially younger voters:
- 22% of registered voters have let others know how they voted on a social networking site such as Facebook or Twitter.
- Social media platforms have also become a notable venue for people to try to convince their friends to vote.
- 30% of registered voters have been encouraged to vote for Democrat Barack Obama or Republican Mitt Romney by family and friends via posts on social media such as Facebook or Twitter.
- 20% of registered voters have encouraged others to vote by posting on a social networking site such as Facebook or Twitter.
Social Media and Voting Study: 22 percent of voters have declared voting choices on social media (The Hill)
Although many of Illinois' hotly contested races won't be settled until late this evening, there's already one clear winner: cable TV.
President Barack Obama is counting on an easy win in his home state, and GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney has Indiana sewn up. As a result, they have focused their ad spending anywhere but here, reducing the take for Chicago's broadcast stations. The lack of any statewide contests also reduces the appetite for the wide reach of the broadcast stations. But the unusually large number of local races and competitive congressional races mean the region's dominant cable provider, Comcast Corp., is seeing a much larger share of Chicago's political ad market this year as local candidates embrace cable TV's ability to focus ads on their own districts instead of buying ads seen from Wisconsin to Indiana.
Why cable TV is the big winner in 2012 election in Illinois
[Commentary] Whichever way this election tilts, it will ultimately be tagged the first full digital election – the first to exploit the spectrum of live, real-time digital media.
The 2012 election has been characterized by 24-hour news content serviced by online comment, 360-degree analysis of candidate speeches and live TV debates that are wrapped with streams of digital vox-popping. With the election running close, it’s likely that the most memorable digital moment will not have been contrived in campaign offices, but will come from articulate social network comment. Unlike previous elections, the winning campaign message will not have been stage-managed but harnessed through open online debate.
2012: The First Digital Election Facebook, Google and Twitter tackle the election (Los Angeles Times) Facebook gets out the vote, this time with mobile prompts and a real-time map (Inside Facebook)
The polls say it is a close race, but what does Google say? Or Facebook? Or Twitter? Can you use these (in some ways) more populist tools to learn anything about voter sentiment?
MediaBistro highlighted a study from StateTech magazine that highlighted five races — the gubernatorial races for Louisiana, California, Ohio and Texas, and the Chicago mayoral race — where the winners had more Twitter followers than their opponents. The graphic then went on to point out that President Barack Obama, as of Oct. 18, had more Twitter and Facebook followers than Mitt Romney. That’s not particularly surprising, given that President Obama was a visible early adopter when it came to campaign social media.
So President Obama has more clout on social media — also, literally, more Klout with a score of 99 to Romney’s 92 — but there are other techy metrics to muse about. Google searches of “Obama” turned up customized search links about the president when users then searched for “Iran,” “Medicare” and “gay marriage.” Meanwhile searches for “Romney” did not turn up related links — a strange quirk of Google’s algorithms.
Larry Kim, a marketer at WordStream, wrote that he suspects that more people are looking up Obama’s stance more often, which he said could be a measure of how engaged Web users are with the Obama campaign. In fact, Kim said that online engagement metrics indicate Obama will win “by a landslide,” based on a read of Web sentiment and the pure amount of money both campaigns have spent on online advertising.
Can search results, online advertising, likes and follows predict an election?
If you've been paying any attention to the digital ad game during this election cycle, it's been easy to draw the conclusion that President Barack Obama's campaign is far and away outspending and, perhaps, outperforming Mitt Romney's digital operation. To add some context to how the digital get-out-the-vote-effort played out in the display space, Moat, an ad search and analytics company, provided AdWeek with some fresh data from its Top 100 advertiser ranking.
The results, which are ranked by total ad volume (and not spending), show that when it comes to digital display, not only was Romney well behind Obama but that the candidate didn't even crack the top 100 U.S. advertisers for online display until October. In fact, in September Obama was the 16th most active display advertiser in the U.S. while Romney was nowhere to be found. By October, both candidates ramped up their digital display output, with Obama landing in the fourth spot on Moat's ranker, while Romney eeked into Most's list as the 100th most active advertiser (again, based on volume, not display). The very early November data shows both candidates continuing to dial up their Web presences, as Obama ascended to the No. 2 spot, while Romney climbed to No. 5. Of course, it's unclear just how important digital display advertising will prove to be in this campaign.
Romney Didn't Crack Top 100 Display Ad List Until October
Watchdog groups are accusing a House committee that investigates wasteful government spending of apparently using taxpayer funds to produce a campaign video attacking President Barack Obama. The video was produced by House Committee on Oversight and Reform, chaired by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA). The one-minute video criticizes Obama for the cost of state dinners and was posted to the committee’s YouTube channel.
It has made its way through Twitter and conservative blogs over the weekend. “It is so far beyond the pale. I think it is clearly an ethics violation,” said Melanie Sloan, the executive director of the government watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. “It is one of the most outrageous abuses of official resources I’ve ever seen.” CREW plans to file a complaint, Sloan said. When asked if taxpayer funds were used to create the video, committee spokesman Seamus Kraft said in an email that “the committee’s video presentation is fully consistent with House rules and did not incur any additional taxpayer expenditures for its production.” According to Paul Ryan, an election law and ethics attorney at the Campaign Legal Center, the video amounts to an “electioneering” campaign ad — it supports or opposes a candidate even though it doesn’t explicitly say vote for or against that candidate. It falls short only in that it wasn’t broadcast on television.
Rep Issa committee accused of making 'sham' campaign ad
Google co-founder Sergey Brin said he's "dreading" the elections. He took to his company's social networking site, Google Plus, to write a dour missive on the state of American voting and politics.
He said his vote "won't matter at all," because he resides in solidly blue-state California -- not a swing state -- and because the Electoral College disproportionately weights votes from less populous states. But that's not Brin's main concern. "No matter what the outcome, our government will still be a giant bonfire of partisanship," he wrote around midnight. "It is ironic since whenever I have met with our elected officials they are invariably thoughtful, well-meaning people. And yet collectively 90% of their effort seems to be focused on how to stick it to the other party." He asked that today’s victors "please withdraw from your respective parties and govern as independents in name and in spirit. It is probably the biggest contribution you can make to the country."
Google co-founder Sergey Brin: "I am dreading today's elections"