Twitter – An Important Part of Today’s Electoral Strategies

Election is the time when politicians are ready to do anything and everything. Politicians know it quite well that popularity is the first and foremost factor that makes them succeed in the elections. It’s true that present day politicians have better options than what the politicians of the yester years had. Moreover, they are adept enough not to miss even a single opportunity by which they can reach the voters and influence them. Be it the present day’s social media sites like Facebook and Twitter; or be it posters, pamphlets, and landline phones of the past.

Politicians On Twitter

The recent U.S. election, held in October this year, can be taken as a representation of this political strategy for influencing the voters. Republicans and the Democrats both were found using all possible tactics to reach the potential voters. Traditional method of pamphlets, posters and the landline telephones were all used in the election campaign along with the technically more sophisticated online social media networks.

Those who couldn’t be reached by tweeting were contacted by emailing, and the ones who were not so internet savvy were interacted by the landline telephones, which can now be considered as the great grand father of today’s smart phones! It was found that people who were too busy to visit Facebook or Twitter did check their mails, thus campaigning was done via emails. And the older generation say above 45 years were found more comfortable with conventional phones i.e. landline telephones.

But at the same time, the social media sites were found more profitable in reaching the younger potential voters. Again, the younger generation was easily reachable by calling on their cellphones where as the older generation could be reached by using the landline phones. The main aim of the politicians is to influence people and earn votes from them and to fulfill this aim they need to be in the comfort zones of the potential voters, and it hardly matters to them by what means they enter their comfort zones and take the voters into their confidence.

Now since Indian citizens too are getting internet savvier, the Indian politicians too have started using the social media networks for their election campaigns. They too ask the voters to support them, keep updating their supporters about the latest electoral moves, and say thanks to the supporters, etc. Meera Sanyal is one such Indian politician who was quite active on Twitter during the elections in April 2009. Perhaps the future of Indian elections too lies in social networking as lots of politicians or the political party members are busy joining such sites these days!