Teknologi vinner inte alla val

I de senaste amerikanska valen – från 2008 – har den internationella valkampanjindustrin imponerats av demokraternas teknologiska förmåga. Men POLITICO berättar idag att det till slut är andra faktorer som avgör:

Democrats learned another tough lesson Tuesday — technology can’t win every election.

In this year’s midterms, Democratic digital hands used nearly every trick in the 2012 Obama e-playbook to try to pull out victories in the House, Senate and governor races. They sliced and diced data, micro-targeted key parts of their electorate and honed in on voters via Facebook.

But while the results could have been much worse, they still lost in most of their battlegrounds.

All the techno-wizardry couldn’t trump the basic political dynamics of a difficult year for Democrats — including the unpopularity of President Barack Obama, the six-year itch that favors the party out of power, and low turnout that normally accompanies midterms.

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Scott Goodstein, the Obama 2008 external online director and founder of digital firm Revolution Messaging, credited the GOP for making gains during the midterms with their online fundraising and data management. But he said their tech work still didn’t play a role in the 2014 wave.

“Are Republicans catching up to the Democrats in technology? Yes. Did they make great strides? Yes. Can you say technology won or lost on either side? No. And I think either side taking credit and pointing here or there to say technology is winning or losing would be silly,” he said.

“When you lose by 10 point margins in so may races, something is fundamentally wrong and you need to do some deeper soul searching than a technology firm saying we could have made up this or that.”

POLITICO