Political Campaigns Go Viral

[Commentary] Since 1952 campaigns have spent most of their budgets on TV and radio. But in the year ahead, smart campaigns will devote a good deal less money to running 30-second TV ads and a good deal more to using the Internet to organize, persuade, motivate and raise funds. The trend toward Internet-centric campaigns is being driven by changes in where people get election information. According to the Pew Research Center, in the last presidential race 26% said they received most of their election news from the Internet, while 28% cited newspapers. In 2012, the Web will likely eclipse newspapers and close in on TV as the principal source of election news. The Internet makes it likely that more campaigns will be self-directed from the grass roots. The tea party movement, for example, would have been impossible to organize and coordinate without email and the Web. Thus campaign managers will have to rely less on activity in centralized headquarters and more on volunteers—working at their pace and in their way—to reach voters on their laptops, tablets and smart phones. It will take time for political practitioners to figure out what works and what doesn't work on the Internet. But we are seeing a version of Joseph Schumpeter's "creative destruction" fundamentally alter the landscape of American politics. It will have huge implications on how campaigns are run, who we elect, and what kind of country we become.