Polling trends and Google trends

Polling data is abundant online for this election and it's becoming quite a popular thing to follow.

Today, Daily Kos published results from eleven different polls. Pollster.com and fivethirtyeight.com are two good sites for polling data online. They also put up a tracking poll primer today.

Also I read an interesting article by Daniel Sinker showing the Google search data for Obama vs. McCain and how it parallels polling data.

I also like Slate's poll tracking application for the iPhone - it's been a good way to watch results on the fly.

Listen to Digital Politics Thursday

Thursday, September 25th, I'll be on Karen Jagoda's "Digital Politics" radio show at SignOnRadio. The topic of the show is women voters and I will be on with Mindy Finn who ran e-strategy for Mitt Romney '08 and worked on Bush '04 as well as for the RNC.

The show begins at 12:00pm Pacific and those who are interested can listen live from the site via RealPlayer, Windows Media Player, or iTunes. Call-in number is 866-818-6384 for questions. The show will be podcast and available for listening after it's aired as well. Check back to the site for more details.

Latest Online Campaigning Tactic - Attack Websites

Here's the latest in my column for The Huffington Post - "Smear 2.0: Attack Ad Culture Goes Online." It goes into detail about the latest campaign sites launched on specific issues targeting the media and the public. The sites are mostly being used as a campaigning tool by Democrats, but Republicans have launched a few as well.

What the Latest Pew Numbers Mean

According to Pew Internet and American Life Project, an initiative launched to "explore the impact of the Internet" on civic and political participation, the number of Americans of voting age who watched political videos online during the primaries (by May 11) nearly tripled from 2004 (35% in '08 vs. 13% in '04). And more people are using social networking sites for participating in campaigns (10%) than are contributing money to them (6%). Translating that to real numbers, in 2004, roughly 21 Million people were obtaining news and campaign information online (the most prominent online activity related to campaigns). According to Pew, that number has probably doubled for 2008.

As I mentioned Monday, Pew released their latest survey results Sunday, having interviewed 2,251 Americans of voting age. 1,553 of those surveyed are online in some form - email, web, text messaging, etc.. That's nearly three out of every four American adults, up from two out of every four in 2000. The results produced some interesting stats, but the big number gaining attention is that almost half of Americans (46%) have used online technologies (via the Internet or cell phone) to participate in political activity during the 2008 campaign to date.

Ben Adler from Politico.com asks the question of the hour: "Can McCain compete with Obama online?" It's no secret. As ABC News noted, "the survey finds Sen. Barack Obama is winning the online political war in 2008." This data just confirms what we already know. Democrats are winning online. That doesn't necessarily translate to votes, but times are a-changin.

We still have a long way to go in terms of convincing the American public of the Internet's legitimacy in the process, however. Approximately 60% of Americans believe that "the Internet is full of misinformation and propaganda that too many voters believe is accurate." With new media and citizen journalism abounding next door to unsubstantiated rumor sites, it's no wonder the public is skeptical. But it's just a matter of time...

Meanwhile, if we extrapolate the numbers Pew just released, the majority of Americans of voting age will be turning to the Internet and online technologies in their process of determining who to cast their ballots for in 2012 - if not by 2010. It's even possible we could achieve a majority before this November, and we know what that means.

New Data Reported on Internet Use in Political Campaigns

The Pew Internet and American Life Project released their latest report yesterday. It's chock full of stat nuggets in terms of percentages of adult Americans who are online, politicking online, watching videos online, and using social networking online all for the purposes of finding and choosing candidates to vote for in the election.

Most of the numbers aren't surprising. That 46% of Americans of voting age are doing something online related to politics is, however, a big deal in terms of providing data supporting that candidates in future elections need to take advantage of online technologies more and more in order to increase their chances of winning. It's also important in terms of people working on tech related to politics: it means we're here to stay.

Convincing candidates and potential candidates to use online technologies for their campaigns when money is tight is always a challenge and is sometimes a gamble. In more rural areas where the majority of voters are not necessarily online, tried and true field and direct mail methods still work best. But these numbers show a shift in terms of who's online and they show that nearly 75% of Americans have access to campaign communications via the Internet or cell phones. Even for those campaigns, not having an Internet presence at all could be dangerous.

So for everyone out there working on campaigns, here's the story: incorporate online methodology within your campaign, and for Democrats seeking a younger voter base in particular, integrating technology-based strategies within the entire framework of the campaign organization, as Obama has, will make your field organization stronger. Build the best web site you can, get people working on smart email communications, put up a blog, and find ways to make the campaign have two-way traffic, receiving information back from potential voters, not just sending out the usual sound bytes to them. Create a dialogue with potential constituents. Learn about their needs. Utilize social networks. Make the campaign engaging and interesting.

There are a lot of lessons within the data, but I encourage anyone interested to look at the reports yourselves and take what you will from them. The campaigns of the future will only build on what we have now, so learning about what worked in '08 will only improve chances your candidate will win in '10 or '12.

A Two-Way Street

This blog is not just about sharing news in terms of what's going on in campaigning technology. It's also about educating people and organizations about why it's important. Social networking tools, for example, work because they connect people in a way that makes the world seem smaller which is incredibly important in politics and activism. We all want to know how this affects us.

So when you take a political campaign, you have voters wanting to hear from candidates, but the candidates really do want to hear from the voters. It's supposed to be a two-way street. When you're talking about a massive state or a national campaign, that's more difficult to achieve. Candidates of recent years found that the best way it worked was to reach out to people in events and via radio or television. But that was largely one-way communication. They only get a few questions here and there from individuals or media commentators, vetted through committees often wanting to target the questioning, so people get a limited view of the candidates.

Throughout the primary season, you hear presidential candidates talk about how much they like going to Iowa and particularly New Hampshire, because given the way the process works, they are forced into more two-way settings where they really get to talk back-and-forth with voters, get a sense of their concerns, and hone their policy proposals as a result. And the voters can talk in small communities with each other.

This is where the Internet and online technologies come into play. Now with bloggers having the opportunity to ask their questions of candidates and receive answers back, as MOMocrats did, for example, we can continue the discussion on a local (in virtual space) level. And with tools like online polling, candidate blogs, social networking tools like MySpace and Twitter, we can interact more with the campaigns.

In Obama's case, it seems to be working. People really feel he's out there listening to them. The other day, I met a woman who said she twittered with Barack Obama and she really believed it was the senator himself doing the twittering. And even when pressed that it was probably a staffer, she didn't care - she was just excited that they cared to keep her in the loop. You can't buy enough TV advertising to get that kind of effect.

So these are examples of why using these tools can help your campaigns. It brings voters closer to where we really should be in participating in the political process. So next time you feel guilty for wandering around facebook, remember this: it works.

Ellen Malcolm, Women Bloggers & Partnering with Women Candidates

Today, I had the privilege of being invited to meet with Ellen Malcolm, Founder & President of EMILY's List. EMILY's List, for those who don't know, is the largest PAC in the U.S. and also a phenomenal training organization for pro-choice Democratic women who want to run for office and work in campaigns. (I have also had the privilege of being through their Political Opportunity Program training in 2005 through Emerge and it is incredible. Highly recommended.) 'EMILY' stands for "Early Money Is Like Yeast" because early money in campaigns shows candidate viability and makes the difference between who stays in the race to win.

Thanks to Ramona Oliver, EMILY's List Communications Director, a small group of us met over lunch in San Francisco and discussed how to utilize the Internet, particularly blogs, to get the message of women candidates out. Others in the group included Elisa Camahort of BlogHer, Gina Cooper of Netroots Nation, Elisa Batista of MotherTalkers, and Page Rockwell of the Salon.com "Broadsheet". (A couple of others were invited, but being busy women, were already double-booked.) We spoke about our own experiences with online politics, the blogosphere, and how to get more women mobilized online.

Sitting across from Ellen Malcolm, who according to Wikipedia, was "named one of America's most influential women by Vanity Fair (1998), one of the '100 Most Important Women in America' by Ladies' Home Journal (1999), one of the 'Women of the Year' by Glamour (1992), and 'Most Valuable Player' by the American Association of Political Consultants," gave me a real feeling of empowerment - knowing this woman created an organization that has launched over 11 senators, 55 congresswomen and 7 governors to their seats, not including all of the statewide women she helped attain public office. One woman, harnessing the power of other women, can really do all of that. I've heard these statistics before, and I've seen her speak at major events before, but somehow sitting at lunch together made me feel like what she does is more real. Hearing her speak on a personal level about her dream of seeing Hillary Clinton sworn in as our first woman president was really inspiring to me.

First, we talked about Hillary's hair (just kidding - that never even crossed our minds). Seriously though, the topics ran the gamut from utilizing blog advertising to helping women bloggers learn more about working with the 'mainstream' media (see yesterday's post relating to the New York Times article about women in politics online). The one point I wanted to get across to EMILY's List was the importance of candidate and high-level buy-in about online tools for campaigning; in order to use them effectively, the campaign manager, communications director and state directors (if it's national) need to totally grok why and how the net can help them win. Or at least they need enough confidence in the explanations given to them by people who do grok it who they feel they can trust. I got the sense that they already knew this, but it never hurts to have another person who's worked in the field support that notion. I've found it's absolutely essential in conducting a competitive campaign online.

It was a great lunch, and I enjoyed learning more about the other amazing women at the table as well. I hope I have the opportunity to work with all of them in one way or another in the future. I won't spill the beans on everything else discussed, but let's just say that I'm looking forward to mobilizing women for women to win in '08 and beyond.

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Originally posted at sairy.com, the personal blog of FutureCampaigns founder, Sarah Granger.

Last Week's San Mateo County Democratic Tech & Politics Event Recap

Normally, I'd do a better job of writing about these events from last week, but it was a pretty crazy week. Anyway, my apologies for lateness to those who couldn't attend the event and wanted to read the synopses here. The Technology, Politics & Innovation Panel set up by San Mateo County Democratic Party leaders Andrew Byrnes and Daniel Yost, was well organized. It was nice to see more local people who work in this area.

Tuesday's event in Menlo Park featured six panelists: Peter Leyden, Michelle Kraus, Perla Ni, David Chiu, Josh Becker and Dave Pine. Peter gave a nice presentation about how he and the New Politics Institute are working in Congress to get more people up to speed on technology. He spoke about how ad revenue is gradually shifting over and how campaigns are benefitting from placing Google ads, for example.

Michelle formerly ran Digital Campaigns, she has participated in The Huffington Post and she has an organization called Technology and Politics in Menlo Park. She gave an interesting example of producing a low cost video ad opposing Prop. 90 in the last CA statewide election and how they were able to reach over 300,000 page views a day and capture 2 points during the election from that campaign.

Perla Ni spoke about how Voterwatch makes Congressional videos searchable and how difficult it is to make change on the Hill in terms of opening up these videos to the public, how long it takes to get access to the video transcripts and how cumbersome it is to find real information about what is discussed. She spoke about reaching out to blogs to draw attention to this issue. David Chiu co-founded Grassroots.org along with Perla, who recently founded Voterwatch.org. David addressed how often this field changes in terms of technology being used in campaigns. He talked about how important data and message are in campaigns.

Josh Becker formerly worked as a press secretary in Washington. His focus is on how we get people to use tech tools locally in campaigns, and he spoke about getting the "smart, entrepreneurial people" in Silicon Valley together to make substantive change. Then Dave Pine spoke as "Mr. Local." A former General Counsel for Handspring, he's now running for local office. He spoke about how technology is changing things for local elections in terms of managing contacts and voter data, YouTube videos, eVites, and Cafe Press. He mentioned the Burliingame Voice as an example of a local blog that gets some good discussion.

After their presentations, we had a lengthy Q&A discussion and then we discussed more local political engagement issues. There was some talk about whether positive or negative campaigning will make more of an impact in this election. I concur with what David Chiu said which is essentially that both will happen, but I'll take it further and say I think the media will still focus on the negative things like the YouTube videos making fun of candidates, but that the positive things like the social networking will even it out. (I'll admit it - I thought the sites like MySpace and Facebook were just representative of meaningless stats at first, but I'm beginning to believe that they may actually affect how some people learn about candidates and how they vote.)

There was some exciting talk about how young people ("Gen X") are voting more now and the correlation between that data and use of the Internet in politics. Then we discussed getting a San Mateo County blog going. I typed furiously and got most of the meeting into notes, so if anyone wants the full transcript, I'd be happy to send it out by email.

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Originally posted at sairy.com, the personal blog of FutureCampaigns founder, Sarah Granger.

Change.org Presidential Matchmaker Feat

One of my favorite sites in the whole world (and as it turns out, it's locally run)is Change.org. Tonight, I met the founder, Ben Rattray, who is - no surprise - both knowledgeable and passionate about enabling people to take action for important causes and candidates. While poking around Change.org further, I found a cool Presidential Matchmaker widget that matches you up with presidential candidates.

Surprise - my selection on issues matched me up with Hillary Clinton at 81%. The only reason it wasn't closer is because the issues are listed as one-liners so it's difficult to know exactly what they're supporting and in some cases I'd support something Hillary "strongly supports" and vice versa, so in reality we're probably more in the 95th percentile on the issues. I think the feature could actually be more specific, but it does a fairly good job laying out a variety of issues and it's fun to use.

At the bottom of my comparison list was Duncan Hunter at 22% in common with my views. The only place we remotely agreed was that I answered that I was ok with churches assisting people on welfare (although I might change my mind on this if I knew more about the issue) and he's strongly in favor. Why? I don't see why letting churches give food to some people in their communities is bad unless that means it's in lieu of the government giving funds. I don't think it should be an either-or proposition and I don't think the government should reduce welfare support just because churches might pitch in. I know the issue goes deeper than this, but that's not the purpose of this post. No way am I voting for Duncan Hunter in any universe, but Change.org always gets my vote.

You have to join Change.org and select the Politicians tab in order to see the Matchmaker feature. Enjoy.

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Originally posted at sairy.com, the personal blog of FutureCampaigns founder, Sarah Granger.

Two Great Bay Area Politics & Technology Events This Week

Event #1 - Tomorrow (Tuesday) in Menlo Park -

Panel and meeting, no charge, where some interesting local innovators will be discussing the use of technology in politics and how we can utilize it to help elect Democrats in California in 2008. Based on the panelists and host committee, it should be a really good discussion.

Details:
When: Tuesday, September 18th from 7 to 9 p.m.
Where: Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP, 1100 Marsh Road, Menlo Park in the Olympic Room. (*Note new room.)
This is a free event, however you are encouraged to RSVP to contact[at]sanmateodemocrats[dot]org. Food will be provided.

Panelists:
Josh Becker, Founder of New Cycle Capital
David Chiu, Founder of Grassroots Enterprises
Joseph Green, Founder of Project Agape
Michelle Kraus, CEO of Digital Campaigns
Peter Leyden, Director of the New Politics Institute
David Pine, Former General Counsel for Handspring
Perla Ni, Founder of Greatnonprofits.org

Event #2 - Sunday in Berkeley -

September 23. "Politics 101 Meets Web 2.0: Democracy or Demagoguery?" 4 to 6 p.m., Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar St., $15 at door for food, drink, and open mike discussion for digital and analog political activists. Political candidates of all stripes now have web sites, participate in social networks, and can respond to folks via YouTube. So are we closer to democracy?

See also: more information on the Hillside Club site.

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Originally posted at sairy.com, the personal blog of FutureCampaigns founder, Sarah Granger.

techPresident on Compete.com Data - Site Visits Mirror Recent Polls

I thought this post by Micah Sifry of techPresident was prescient - according to compete.com, site visit stats so far this year mirror polling data both nationally and in key states like Iowa and California. As of June, Clinton has a strong lead. Republican data isn't as strong as Democratic data in general - it's widely known they aren't campaigning as heavily online - but their rankings still line up fairly well.

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Originally posted at sairy.com, the personal blog of FutureCampaigns founder, Sarah Granger.

BigFix Presidential Campaign Winning Online

According to an article in the San Francisco Chronicle, BigFix, an Emeryville-based IT Security & Compliance Provider, is running a faux viral presidential campaign online to gain traffic and interest in the site. It's working... their pretend candidate, Ray Hopewood, is on Flickr, MySpace, and everywhere in-between. Check out his web site. It's pretty good.

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Originally posted at sairy.com, the personal blog of FutureCampaigns founder, Sarah Granger.

A Review of 2006 Online Campaigns

I'm almost done with the political blogging for the week, but I had to examine how candidates online this year. Here are some examples of tight races where I took a look at their online campaigns and projected winners based on their online campaigns (web, blog, & email when relevant). In most cases, the candidate with the better site won but not all.

CA Governor:
Better online campaign - neither (both were bad)
Winner - Arnold Schwarzenegger, http://www.schwarzenegger.com/
(opposing candidate - Phil Angelides, http://www.angelides.com/)

CA Lieutenant Governor:
Better online campaign - John Garamendi, http://www.garamendi.org/
Winner - John Garamendi, http://www.garamendi.org/
(opposing candidate - Tom McClintock, http://www.tommcclintock.net/)

CA Secretary of State:
Better online campaign - Bruce McPherson, http://www.mcpherson2006.com/
Winner - Debra Bowen, http://www.debrabowen.com/

MI Governor:
Better online campaign - TIE (both were good) between Dick DeVos, http://www.devosforgovernor.com/ & Jennifer Granholm, http://www.granholmforgov.com/
Winner - Jennifer Granholm, http://www.granholmforgov.com/

MO Senator:
Better online campaign - Claire McCaskill, http://www.claireonline.com/
Winner - Claire McCaskill, http://www.claireonline.com/
(opposing candidate - Jim Talent, http://www.talentforsenate.com/)

CT Senator:
Better online campaign - Ned Lamont, http://www.nedlamont.com/
Winner - Joe Lieberman, http://www.joe2006.com/

RI Senator:
Better online campaign - Sheldon Whitehouse, http://www.whitehouseforsenate.com/ (by a hair)
Winner - Sheldon Whitehouse, http://www.whitehouseforsenate.com/
(opposing candidate - Lincoln Chafee, http://www.chafeeforsenate.com/)

Overall comments --
One thing I noticed was that in general, more Democrats' sites had blogs. Of course, most of them hadn't been updated in a few days, but at least they had them. I was amazed at how the Michigan governor's race had two sites that looked incredibly similar - but I was impressed that Granholm's site included a Farsi (I'm assuming) translation for the huge Middle Eastern population in the Detroit area, along with Spanish. And I was a bit shocked that a couple of the Republican candidates' sites were so sparse they could've been local city council web sites.

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Originally posted at sairy.com, the personal blog of FutureCampaigns founder, Sarah Granger.

Election Results Online

I'm guessing I'm not the only person who's looking online for results, so I found some good ones from political friends... here's where to look (some are election pages within their sites):

National:
CNN
CNN Blog Party
Washington Post
Think Progress

California:
California Secretary of State
Sacramento Bee

Bay Area:
San Francisco Chronicle
San Jose Mercury News
San Mateo County Elections
Santa Clara County Registrar of Voters
Palo Alto Weekly
The Almanac

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Originally posted at the Silicon Valley Moms Blog.

Angelides Site Gone - Error Messages Look Fishy

Hmm. Goto angelides.com. See what you find.

As I type this, it's not there. (Although it may be back up again by the time most people read this post.) Went bye-bye at least 2 hours ago when I checked it last.

Three reasons it could go poof:
1) They ran out of money and the ISP pulled the plug (doubtful)
2) They got hacked (possible)
3) The site crashed because of more traffic than expected (most likely)

What's really strange is that the page gives an error with a misspelling, so it's an error that was individually crafted for use on the site, not a generic server error. It says: "Sorry, the requested page was not found. Please try again. Original URI: /" It's not written like a typical error message and they misspelled URL. I don't get it.

I'm not an expert in web programming, but I have to say it looks like from the HTML that this page was deliberately put there and I have to say based on that, I'm leaning toward thinking it was hacked (DOS - Denial Of Service - attack). It just doesn't feel to me like an authentic error page unless someone in the campaign mocked it up on a different machine when the site crashed as a temporary measure.

A few months back, the same thing happened to Lieberman's site and I didn't witness it, but I know he threatened legal action thinking it was a hacker although I assumed at the time it was more likely the server couldn't handle the load. (I also didn't see the site during the outage). In this case, I'm not so sure.

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Originally posted at sairy.com, the personal blog of FutureCampaigns founder, Sarah Granger.

E-Voting Dilemma? We Have Two Options Left

It's election time again and electronic voting machines are back on top in the news.  "Hacking Democracy" aired on HBO this week, articles are still surfacing about Maryland's problems with electronic voting machines in their primary, and already a plethora of problem reports from machine pre-tests are rolling in.  If you voted absentee already, you can sigh in relief that you're done.  For everybody else, read on.

In order to make sure this post is taken seriously, here's why I'm qualified to write about this topic:  I've worked in computer and network security for several years, I've written about a wide range of security topics for reputed publications, I have edited three books on computer security, and I'm a member of the U.S. Association for Computing Machinery Public Policy Committee.  I have also worked in the past with the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility, both of whom have worked closely with the Verified Voting Foundation.

The organizations noted above have worked extremely hard to guarantee a voter-verifiable paper audit trail (VVPAT) in all future elections.  They succeeded in California but not every state has been so lucky.  And, I might add, here in California the machines we're using are not entirely without bugs, errors, or security concerns.  For example, San Mateo County is using eSlate (by Hart InterCivic) handheld devices not unlike PDAs.  In Calloway County, Kentucky, votes have been switched on straight tickets from all Democrats to all Republicans when the results were sent to the review screen.  This is happening across the country with machines made by all four major e-voting machine companies, flipping both ways.

The way I see it, we only have two options left as voters.

Option 1: If you have a machine that provides the option to verify your vote with a paper audit trail, you can do so at the end of the voting process.  This is the voter's responsibility, not the volunteers at the polls.  And it is still possible that the vote recorded is not the same as the vote printed.  Aside from that, most states do not have adequate processes in place for reporting errors.  Do this at your own risk, but if you decide to use an e-voting machine, please participate in Verified Voting's Election Transparency Project.

Option 2: If you have an electronic voting machine that does not request a paper ballot.  These are real ballots, not provisional ballots.  They will be counted on election day and verified.  It's old tech and it won't work for some people with disabilities, but it's safe and it's proven.  For those of you who are not lucky enough to have real paper ballots available but instead are granted provisional paper ballots only, file a complaint.

I don't think anyone needs to be reminded that our democracy is at stake here.  To see up-to-date results on errors being reported around the country, goto VotersUnite.org.  For more information about the importance of VVPATs or to participate in the Election Transparency Project, check out VerifiedVoting.org.  HBO's documentary, "Hacking Democracy", will be aired again Tuesday morning.

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Originally posted at the Silicon Valley Moms Blog.