Turning Online Activists to Offline Voters

As I have discussed before and many people already know, the 2004 campaign of Howard Dean was very promising at the outset. The problem was that Dean, who garnered a huge amount of support from the online community before the Iowa primaries, could not convert online support into real life action. Dean sent online volunteers to Iowa to help him campaign, instead of using online supporters from Iowa to help. This cost him dearly, with a very embarrassing defeat and subsequent rally.

Learning from Dean's mistakes, Barack Obama is trying a different tactic to convert internet supporters. On April 1, Obama's campaign organized a nationwide "community kickoff" event to encourage the estimated 6,000 groups established on his website to come together and turn online excitement into real votes. According to his campaign, over 5,000 groups across the country participated in the event, with individual supporters inviting friends and sometimes strangers into their home to view the live webcast.

No one really knows how this new tactic is going to play out for him, but I just hope that he continues more of this. While its great to announce your intentions online and have facebook groups, the real key is exciting people enough about your campaign to volunteer. The online world is a far different animal than the real world, but if he can do it - convert the onliners - this will be a turning point for political campaigns that will be here to stay.

Much like the campaign of Franklin Roosevelt, who was the first to use technology in a meaningful way to address the voters, political strategists will be keeping a close eye on how this turns out for current number two in the race for the Democratic nomination.