For our last class of the semester, we discussed what we learned about social media and its impacts on politics during this semester. Professor Jeff South asked the class to come up with five major issues we have learned or taken away from this course. 

By Gregory Goldie

Our classmate Shane Abinette said that fact-checking social media plays a big part in its usage and mentioned that during the presidential debates many people were fact-checking on sites like Twitter and Facebook what the candidates said. Selena Motley then turned the conversation towards the speed at which news stories are spreading on social media. She was surprised by how quickly social media content spreads and mentioned how fast the Big Bird reference in Mitt Romney’s first debate spread throughout social media sites. Caitlin Puffenberger then said that the reason stories spread so quickly on social media is that people expect more news on social media and that news becomes old very fast.

Relating this topic to the presidential debate, Dr. Marcus Messner mentioned the “47% video” and the speed at which it spread throughout social media. He also stated that a video of this caliber would have ended a campaign four years ago, but this time Romney quickly recovered from this controversy by his first debate performance and if it wasn’t for Hurricane Sandy, the election would have been a lot closer.

Professor South then asked the class whether students thought social media had a positive or negative effect on politics. Sujoy Chatterjee said that social media is a negative influence because it is biased. Katie Ketcham agreed and said that it’s hard to see which news sources on social media are reliable. Maeve Talbot then spoke about the validity and opinion of social media. She said that you shouldn’t let social media be your only source. She said that on social media sites you tend to stay in your own bubble, because you only blog posts of your friends and family who most likely express the same views as your. Professor South agreed with this statement by saying that you live in a political chamber of your own thoughts on social media.

The topic of conversation then turned to how politicians utilize social media. Christian Ruiz said that social media was used for candidates to connect with a larger audience. Professor South added that candidates were listening more in this election and were more responsive and posted more frequently using social media. Maeve Talbot mentioned that candidates can use social media to their advantage by using family or behind-the-scenes photos to humanize themselves to gain a greater following. Then Harrison Sun brought up the disadvantages of candidates on social media, saying they need to be more cautious in what they say, mentioning the “47% video. ” Dr. Messner also called to mind George Allen’s “Macaca” incident in the 2006 elections.

The class then ended with Professor South explaining the difference in how election news is covered now in comparison with the previous decades. He said that campaigns cannot be solely focused on social media, but stressed that candidates need to realize the importance that social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook play in campaigns — now and in the future.

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“VCU Votes” set up a get-out-the-vote campaign in the weeks leading up to election day, but our efforts didn’t stop there. All of our students were busy and engaged on Nov. 6.

By Maeve Talbot

Students in our class spread out to polling precincts in the Richmond community to collect information from citizens exercising their right to vote. Each student collected two videos from a diverse subset of the population to find out their motivation for coming out to vote. These videos were shared with the public through the website of CBS 6 and our own YouTube channel.

Furthermore, several of our students, including Alix Hines, Katherine Johnson, and Caitlin Puffenberger, covered the results of the election by live tweeting from several hotspot locations such as a Tim Kaine and George Allen election watch parties. The covered Tim Kaine’s celebration for news outlets such as CBS 6 and Al Jazeera English. Some of the students had already live tweeted the presidential debate watch parties of the candidates for NBC 12.

The events on election night included the candidates’ and their supporters speeches, which were covered by our students using the official hashtags of the respective organizations. Videos of the speeches are also available on our YouTube channel.

Our campaign “VCU Votes” encouraged many students and citizens within the Richmond community to vote and continued to inform the population through election night via social media.

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NBC 12 anchor and reporter Ryan Nobles came to our class on Nov. 20 to discuss the emergence of Virginia as a swing state and the role of social media in the presidential race. He also gave insights into his one-on-one interviews with the president and his challenger.

By Miracle Amo and Adrianna Moralez

President Barack Obama’s 2008 win in Virginia was the first time a democratic candidate had won Virginia in over 40 year and Nobles credits Obama’s success in Virginia to the amount of time he spent here.  Nobles recalled that during the 2008 presidential election he had the numbers to three Obama staffers that were based in and in charge of Virginia, while John McCain’s campaign only had one staff member who was in charge of not only Virginia but North Carolina and Washington as well. After the Republicans loss in Virginia in 2008, the Mitt Romney campaign paid a lot of visits to Virginia. Nobles himself has personally covered 20 different Obama events, with 3 one-on-one interviews and has covered Romney a couple of times as well.

Nobles is originally from upstate New York and was recruited to come to Richmond in the fall of 2007 as a weekend anchor. While Nobles stated that he did not know much about Virginia prior to his arrival, after the presidential primaries in 2008 he realized that Virginia was going to become a swing state and play a very important role in the election. In 2008, he witnessed the first time Virginia went blue after the primaries and he was witnessing the first time an African American candidate to win the White House. Nobles covered a lot of stories throughout the election. Nobles took notice again that Obama spent a great amount of time in Virginia in this past election. He also said that the first stop Romney made to show off his VP pick Paul Ryan was in Virginia . Ryan held 200 local interviews and two of them were with Nobles.

When it comes to social media, Nobles did not create a Twitter account until after the party conventions in 2008. He said he didn’t even reach 100 followers until President Obama’s inauguration. However, the big difference between Twitter then and now was the fact that back in 2008, although there was a smaller following on Twitter, users were more active. Now, Twitter has a lot more users and almost everyone in each campaign has an account. Nonetheless, this hasn’t always been a good thing, because different staffers have different opinions on important and sometimes controversial issues. In class, Nobles recalled how an Obama supporter tweeted that Ann Romney had never worked a day in her life, which created a lot of outrage from stay-at-home moms. After this incident Ann Romney created her own Twitter page and used it to respond to the criticism.  “Twitter and Facebook are loaded guns, because people are constantly looking for a slip up or something out of the ordinary,” said Nobles. Which helps to create a clearer picture on how some of the election scandals broke out.

One thing Nobles wanted us to know was that Twitter users and most of social media users tend to be more liberal and that you can’t gauge who is going to win an election just on social media alone.  Even though President Obama won in the electoral college, the election was still very close. While Obama may have used social media more effectively, it were also the other forms of campaigning that Obama used that helped him win. “You have to be versatile in your approach. You need to be on television, in newspapers, and traditional internet. You’re never going to win a campaign solely through social media,” said Nobles.

The reason that Nobles says that social media will never be the dominant form of media is because peoples’ habits and technology change. Veering away from the social media points he was making, Nobles made a prediction before election day on which candidate would win each state in the 2012 election. He based his prediction on three main criteria: public polls, viewed where resources and activities were being put, and the history of the states. He was only wrong on one state which meant his prediction was extremely well thought out and accurate.

Ryan Nobles’ visit to our class answered a lot of questions that some of us had concerning social media, and his views on the presidential election were not only informative but also gave great insights as well.

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For the last assignment in our class, you have to create a profile on the business network LinkedIn. You need to develop a professional profile and achieve at least a 80-90% completion rate on your account. You need to include information on your current position (VCU or internship/job) and location, your past jobs, your education, and your skills as well as a professional photo and at least 20 professional connections. You need to have at least one professional (professors, employers) recommendations. Further details and instruction will be provided in class on Nov. 15.

The following are some resources with valuable tips on how to create an effective LinkedIn profile:

Tipsheet Jeff distributed in class (with tips from him and from LinkedIn)

The Beginner’s Guide to LinkedIn (Mashable)

13 Essential Tips for Landing a Job on LinkedIn (Mashable)

Get Started with LinkedIn (LinkedIn)

The first draft of the LinkedIn profile is due at the beginning of class on Nov. 20. We will take a look at your profile in class and give you immediate feedback. Your final draft of your LinkedIn profile is due on Nov. 29 (e-mail the link to your profile to Dr. Marcus Messner before class).

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Bill Adair, founder and editor of the Pulitzer Prize winning site PolitiFact.com, spoke to our class via Skype on Nov. 13 and talked about the importance and impact political fact checking has had on politicians.

By Kathyleen Ketcham and Selena Motley

Adair first came up with the idea for PolitiFact when he was working as a White House reporter during the 2004 campaign. He noticed people quoting without questioning the validity of statements and felt a bit of guilt for not doing any fact checking of his own.  His proposed solution to this was to launch a political fact checking website with a truth-o-meter, determining the legitimacy of politicians’ statements which was a very easy sell to his editors. By spring of 2007, prototypes were created and the site was officially launched by August 2007. It has expanded since then, giving eleven different states their own pages on the website, including Virginia.

There is one site here in Richmond, run by the Richmond Times Dispatch. When asked whether PolitiFact has filtered the words of politician Adair responded he believes politicians are more careful because every word they say has the ability to be thoroughly fact checked. He added that parties watch politicians and their ratings on the website. Positions are jeopardized the more one receives negative ratings, as in the example of Democrat Josh Mandel. Adair said when political speeches are written, the question whether the claims made will pass the ‘PolitiFact check’ is asked.

PolitiFact has turned out to be one of the most unique and original forms of journalism. While other websites do fact checking in the form of blog posts or articles, PolitiFact utilizes a consistent rating system from “truth” to “pants on fire.” The site also organizes its ratings into different categories such as locations, subjects, elections, and promises, making it very user friendly.

So what exactly makes a good fact check? Adair said that it takes a full eight-hour day to complete a thorough check on new happenings. He also said that live fact checking, such as during the political debates, is very risky and nearly impossible without having done previous work on the claims to be checked.

He said that the goal of PolitiFact is not to get politicians to stop lying, but to help created an informed democracy. Adair believes that this goal has been accomplished due to the heavy traffic on their website and use of their mobile application. However, Adair speculates that PolitiFact has had somewhat of an impact among politicians despite there being no data to confirm this.  For example, in 2009 Sarah Palin made a mistake when she misinterpreted President Obama’s healthcare plan by stating that seniors and disabled people would have to “stand in front of Obama’s ‘death panel’ so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their ‘level of productivity in society’, whether they are worthy of health care.” She has changed her explanation several times since being called out by PolitiFact.

There has been much controversy over whether or not PolitiFact has taken an appropriate role in journalism. Usually, stories are reported and the readers are the ones who determine whether or not they are accurate. By reversing the norm, PolitiFact has taken a more assertive role in journalism and has received a lot of backlash from Republicans, but Democrats as well. Adair used a basketball metaphor to illustrate this — how both teams will most always think that the referees are biased and demand that they call a fair game.

Without a doubt, Adair said that healthcare has been the number one fact checking topic due to its complexity and ripeness for falsehood. It was deemed “Lie of the Year” for the past three years. When asked who the politician with the most wrong facts might be, Adair was quick to point the finger at Michelle Bachmann, Republican House member from Minnesota. She currently has 32 false or “pants on fire” statement ratings on PolitiFact, according to Adair.

Adair also explained that his first fact check for the website was on past presidential candidate Mitt Romney. In the spring of 2007, Romney claimed, “Under President Clinton defense spending had decline.” Once Adair fact checked this statement, he found it was true that defense spending had declined in the U.S., but it was not at the fault of President Clinton. With this Adair believed that PolitiFact would transform journalism by covering the truth. And it did.

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Two days after Election Day 2012, VCU journalism student Samra Khawaja spoke to our class via Skype about her role in broadcasting the results of the election as an intern for CNN.

By Christian Ruiz

Khawaja is an undergraduate student in the School of Mass Communications with a concentration in broadcast journalism and a double minor in political science and Spanish. In the summer of 2012, she had the exciting opportunity to cover the presidential election for The Washington Post as a student correspondent who reported news from Richmond. Currently, she is serving as an intern for CNN in Washington, D.C. in hopes of one day fulfilling her dream of working as a CNN correspondent. As an intern, she writes, reports, and packages news within the News Source department, which caters to more than 800 news stations, both nationally and internationally, such as Richmond’s CBS6.

Khawaja described her experience inside CNN during Election Day, proudly affirming that it was a “life-changing experience.” She said that the building was on lock-down, as so many people, including journalists, were in the building, and the employees had to ensure that the operations ran as smoothly as possible during that hectic night, especially with the massive amounts of people inside the building.

In order to do so, several employees were in charge of specific duties, such as providing the reporters with microphones and fact checking the results announced by CNN. According to Khawaja, this involved checking the book given to the employees, Election Night in America, which contained facts about each of the states, such as which state was usually aligned to which party based on the observations of past elections, in order to get the election results right.

Khawaja also discussed the issue of quality versus speed in broadcasting the live election results. In other words, should the accuracy of the results be more important than the speed in airing the results, or vice versa? It was stated that CNN posts the results later compared to other channels, suggesting that CNN is more concerned about quality than speed. She even said that CNN executives hold monthly meetings about what they could have done better and how fast they should disseminate the results, for example. Thus, CNN seems more concerned about the quality of the results than the speed.

Khawaja also discussed the role of social media in reporting about the election. She said that CNN has a strict social media policy, in which employees and interns must undergo a 30-minute social media training class, where they learn that they should not express their own opinions and should not endorse a particular candidate. Rather, they should remain unbiased in their tweeting and other social media activities under CNN. In relation to social media, one of Khawaja’s roles in the election was to update Twitter constantly in order to make sure that CNN’s affiliates kept track of the packages being sent between them and CNN. However, she stated that the official Twitter handle is managed by the CNN station in Georgia.

Although the question was asked regarding how CNN calls election results with only a few percentage of votes, Khawaja said that she did not have sufficient details to answer this question because that information is left for those higher up in the ladder of work in CNN.

However, Khawaja did answer the question on achieving noteworthy internships like her. She suggested that we try to apply to as many internships or career-related training opportunities as possible in order to gain skill because in the end, according to Khawaja, skill is what employers are looking for. Expanding on this, she asserted that we should stand out by making sure that we should have an “abundance of experience” to apply what we learn in class, such as working with The Commonwealth Times and searching for other opportunities to get our own work published. In addition, she stated that we should sound confident in order to boost our credibility.

To conclude the Skype session, she answered the question, “Did social media make an impact in the election?” Khawaja expressed her view on this statement by saying citing the fact that the president tweeted thank-you’s before the final, official results were announced, meaning that the election was, in a sense, over before it was officially over. Thus, social media impacted the election by unofficially closing it. She even compared social media use in this election to that in 2008, deducing that this time was “totally different” than the last time. In 2012, compared to 2008, so much more people were engaged with social media, and there was a record number of people on Twitter and Facebook who wanted to see the opinions of others about the election and who was thinking what. In effect, this brought the online community together despite geographic separation.

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VCU’s School of World Studies held a student research conference on Nov. 9 and our “Social Media and the Presidential Race” class had the opportunity to give an hour-long panel presentation on what we have been studying this semester. We touched on the role of social media on a number of topics including the Occupy Movement, the Arab Spring, SOPA, Kony 2012, foreign elections, and this year’s presidential election. Our presentation sbegan with Miracle Amo greeting the audience and introducing the topics we planned to talk about.

By Shane Abinette

First up was Alix Hines with an impressively detailed explanation of social media’s role on two international social movements, Occupy and the Arab Spring. Describing it as a revolution with “camera phones instead of weapons,” the Arab Spring spread from the self-immolation of a Tunisian merchant to 12 countries in total, over throwing several of the governments or resulting in some significant reforms. Alix then went into the Occupy movement, which may not have been as successful in resulting in reforms, but did bring the phrases “The 1%” or “The 99%” along the inequality they represent to people’s attention. It was also interesting to see how the mainstream media took a month to start reporting on a movement that had been surging on platforms like Twitter.
Next up was Katie Rose discussing the juxtaposition of the successful backlash against SOPA and the “fizzling out” of the Kony 2012 movement. SOPA was a bill meant to heavily crack down on online piracy and the use of trademarked material. Without the 24-hour blackouts on Reddit and Wikipedia, along with the protests in cities across America, this bill could have fundamentally changed the Internet as we know it. In contrast, Katie went on to discuss the failure of the Kony 2012 movement, which boomed at first, but then died out due to scandals with the movement’s organization and leader.

Bringing the focus to social media and elections, I began my presentation on social media and foreign elections. First, I discussed how the phenomenon of social media influencing elections is an aspect of the world’s more affluent democracies. In nations with lower GDPs, the poor do not have access to the Internet, nor the time and resources to assemble movements that can make an impact. I then focused on two affluent nations and their elections that happened this year: South Korea’s parliamentary election, and France’s presidential election. I showed how social media buzz has not been a good indicator of election outcomes. In South Korea, the opposing parties were tied in the polls, but the more liberal party was way ahead in terms of social media outreach, and yet the conservative party still came out on top. In France, social media favored the newly elected President Hollande, but it is hard to say if he beat the incumbent Sarkozy because of social media because of the financial crisis in Europe.

Caitlin Puffenberger then took us to the 2008 and 2012 United States elections and how Facebook and Twitter played a part in them. 2008 was known as the “Facebook election” and many are calling 2012 the “Twitter election.” On both platforms, and in both elections, Obama was significantly ahead of his rivals. Obama consistently has much more “likes” and “followers.” An interesting part of Caitlin’s presentation was when she compared the Twitter strategies of the two main candidates of the 2012 election. Obama focused on retweeting positive things being said about him, while Romney focused on tagging Obama in his tweets, so that those following Obama would also see negative comments about him.

Sujoy Chatterjee then stepped up to the podium to discuss how YouTube had affected the election. The trend we saw in Caitlin’s presentation continued, in that Obama had significantly more views and more voter engagement via posting more videos. Sujoy also went into how so called, “YouTube Moments” can change an election and the media narrative such as with Romney’s “47%” video.

The presentation was then wrapped up with Emily Satchell discussing the effectiveness of social media in acquiring votes. She began with more figures on how Obama had more buzz in social media, but also how that buzz may be positive or negative. Emily showed some very interesting results from a study that looked at the sentiment of the tweets posted about each candidate. Researchers were able to devise a system by which they could tell if a tweet on Obama or Romney was anywhere from fearful to reverent. The study found that Obama had a majority of positive tweets, with negative buzz around 10 to 15%. Romney on the other hand was about 50/50 with positive and negative buzz. So the case for social media being an indicator for elections is looking stronger.

Overall, the class’ presentation was a great success. We were able to quickly and effectively communicate with the VCU student body on a number of the most interesting topics from our class. Great job, guys!

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Here are some instructions for our interviewing project on Election Day on Nov. 6.

Your task: Go to the polling place at the time you signed up for in class last Thursday. Interview at minimum two voters (one woman, one man) with your iPad. Strive for diversity (age, race/ethnicity). The videos should be approximately 30-60 seconds long. The videos will be uploaded right after to a YouTube site, which will provide an overall portrayal of voter opinions in Central Virginia. CBS 6 will use the interviews in its online election coverage.

How to shoot: Go to the polling place and position yourself outside. Do not go inside for the video shoot. Approach a voter (who has already voted) and ask: “I am doing interviews with voters for a class project at VCU. Do you have a moment for a brief interview to talk about who you voted for?” Make sure that you are in a calm environment. Then set up your shot. Hold the iPad horizontally and make sure it focuses correctly on the person. Fill the frame. Remember how to angle a shot off center.

Here’s an example of a good shot: https://vimeo.com/50802596

What to ask OFF camera (before your record):

1)    Please spell your name?

2)    How old are you?

3)    What is your occupation?

What to ask ON camera (you can have questions on tape, but avoid long intros and ends that need to be edited):

1)    Please tell us who you voted for as president and why you made that decision.

2)    How long ago did you make up your mind and what was the deciding factor for you?

3)    Who do you think will win the election?

Upload the videos: After you have completed your video shoots, use your iPad to upload the videos to our class YouTube channel. You might have to return to campus to get a Wifi connection. Here are the steps to upload your videos:

1) Select “Photos” on your iPad

 
2) To select the video you want to upload, click on the arrow in the top right corner and select “Send to YouTube”

 
3) Then sign into our class YouTube account. You received the username and password via e-mail. You can also find them in a file in our Facebook group.

 
4) Then fill out the settings for the video as follows:

 
Title: First and last name, age, occupation

Description: Video produced by [your first and last name]

Category: News and Politics

List the video as “Public”

Then click “Publish”

 
5)  View the video and make sure the upload was successful.

 
6) After you uploaded all of your videos, send an e-mail to mmessner@vcu.edu and jcsouth@vcu.edu to let us know that your uploads are complete. You do NOT need to send the video links to us.

7) When you receive an e-mail back from us, you will be done. Please stay connected until you get that e-mail.

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Vincent Harris discusses the election. (Photo by Dr. Marcus Messner)

By Kaazim Hasan and Harrison Sun

Speaking to our class via Skype, Republican strategist Vincent Harris said he believes social media will have a big impact in this year’s presidential race and other elections.

Harris has worked on digital campaign strategies for such notable GOP figures as Texas Gov. Rick Perry and former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich during their run for the Republican presidential nomination.

Among other observations, he noted that the social media landscape has changed dramatically in recent years. In 2008, campaigns were still heavily using MySpace, for example. But Harris said, “Facebook is the 800-pound gorilla now.”

He said individuals are spending more time than ever on social media sites like Facebook. It’s the campaigns’ jobs to reach the audience while they are online reading their news feeds.

For politicians, the important thing is not the number of people who “like” their Facebook page, Harris said. It’s the amount of interaction a person has, such as when you visit someone’s profile or like a specific post. Facebook rewards interactions; that is why you’re more likely to see status updates from your mom, best friends or others close to you.

Political campaigns are effective when they foster such interaction, Harris said. They can do that by adding graphics to posts and asking for likes, shares and comments on specific content. The more interaction a voter has with a candidate, the more likely the candidate’s postings are to appear on the voter’s news feed.

President Obama has more likes on Facebook than his Republican rival, Mitt Romney. But because of a lack of interaction, only 10 percent of the people who like Obama see his status updates, said Harris, a native Virginian who works out of Austin, Texas.

He said a “like” in Facebook is the simplest form of positive interaction. But the “talking about number” is more relevant in analyzing a particular candidate’s performance in social media buzz.

One might argue that individuals occasionally re-post candidates’ information in negative ways, which would be counted in the statistic above. A simple analysis of share psychology, however, demonstrates that this portion is minimal. People generally will not take the time to talk negatively about a politician when they can promote their favored candidate — a cognitively easier task.

Facebook also allows candidates to target certain groups of people by geography or demographic characteristics, Harris said. For example, a posting about a campaign rally in Ohio could catch more attention if it goes only to Ohio citizens instead of the whole nation. Similarly, in the U.S. Senate race in Connecticut, a candidate could target individuals who had not yet voted (and exclude people who voted early).

Harris made an interesting point concerning Republicans and Democrats in social media usage. According to a study by the Pew Research Center, both parties have similar statistics for social media usage in terms of political campaigning. Thus, there is no gap between Republicans and Democrats in this metric.

Harris said mobile media represent the new frontier for campaign information. More individuals are using mobile technology such as smartphones to interact with candidates.

But they don’t use mobile devices to make campaign donations. Email is still key to online fundraising, Harris said.

A student in the class asked Harris what role social media might play with only a few days before the election. Harris says he thinks social media will affect voters up until the very election. He said information or a recommendation from a friend on Facebook would have more influence on him than a campaign commercial on television.

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Dr. Bob Holsworth visited our Social Media and the Presidential Race class last Thursday to provide insights on the presidential election. The respected political analyst and consultant discussed the “Momentum Theory” and the “Stability Theory,” which support winning election outcomes for Mitt Romney and President Barack Obama respectively.

By Sujoy Chatterjee and Emily Satchell

The “Momentum Theory,” which is fueled by media coverage after the presidential debates, gives a picture of how this election looks like at this moment. According to Holsworth, Romney has gained momentum due to the state of the economy, which has been sluggish.  Romney is playing on this factor to turn the tables around just like Ronald Reagan did in the 1980 campaign against President Jimmy Carter. Americans were held hostage in Iran back then and by playing on that issue as well as the economy, Reagan won the presidential election. This is exactly what Romney is trying to do this election by playing on the economic issues, and so the “Momentum Theory” supports a win for Romney. He is taking battleground states off the table and the election is slowly becoming a referendum, through which Romney may win comfortably.

The “Stability Theory” on the other hand supports a win for Obama as it states that this election looks like the election between President George W. Bush and John Kerry in 2004, when Bush defeated Kerry by a small margin. In this election, Obama represents Bush as the incumbent and is backed up to win under the “Stability Theory.” Since August both candidates have split about even in national polls. Under this theory it is argued that the nation is split down the middle and that no one is moving one way or the other. Therefore, no momentum exists and the electorate will in the end reelect the incumbent by a small margin.

Holsworth also argued that this election could be called a presidential election for the state of Ohio, which is likely to decide the overall election. In order for Romney to win, he needs to win in Virginia, Florida and Ohio. Obama is trying to prevent Romney from winning by raising questions on the qualifications of Romney. Holsworth said that the Obama campaign tries to bring up the question of which candidate cares more about the middle class after Romney’s “47 percent video.” In response to that attack, Republicans bring up the question of who will take care of the economy better.

In order to win the presidential election, Democrats have to overcome voter enthusiasm challenges. According to Holsworth, Obama has to remobilize the voters who voted for him in 2008 and have not voted since. Obama won in Virginia in the 2008 election by garnering 52% of the votes. In 2009 Republicans won the gubernatorial race in Virginia by garnering 58% of the votes.  Hoslworth said that in 2008 out of 100 registered voters 75 showed up to vote. In 2009 only 40 of those 100 registered voters went to the polls. In 2010, 35 voted. In order for Obama to win, Democrats know they have to rally those 35 and 40 people who didn’t vote in 2009 and 2010. But Holsworth stated that Republicans believe that the voter turnout for this presidential election won’t be the same as in 2008. However, third party presidential candidates could also steal some crucial votes from Obama and Romney. Former U.S. Representative Virgil Goode is likely to steal some votes in Virginia from Obama, said Holsworth.

Holsworth also provided insights on how polls are conducted and how they are sampled. The pollsters look at demographics such as age, gender and different races to form their sample composition. After getting their sample population, they use a weighting technique to get precise estimates from the polls. According to Holsworth, not every poll uses the weighting technique and some polls present the data without it. Holsworth thinks 2008 was a little unprecedented. He doesn’t think Obama will win by a landslide if he does and that he won’t win as many independents.

Holsworth also talked about the U.S. Senate race between former Govs. Tim Kaine and George Allen. He said that Kaine can still win if Obama loses in Virginia through his popularity in Central Virginia. In order to prevent Kaine from winning, George Allen on the other hand is trying to link Kaine to Obama.

At the end of his talk to our class, Holsworth said that social media played an important  role in the 2008 election, but now the new development in this election are the Super PACs and unlimited funding for the campaigns. Through Super PACs, people can donate as much as they want and some are donating millions. Super PACs are spending millions of dollars on television advertisements.  Social media on the other hand isn’t the new thing anymore, but it is part of the field of play in any election, said Holsworth.

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