Waiting for the 'Twitter Election?' Keep Waiting

Barack Obama's much-hyped "youth quake," the young social-media army often credited with carrying him into the White House, the 2008 election was won by galvanizing an older population of Democrats and independents, many of whom had never used social media.

Even more recently, the wild inconsistency between Republican primary wins and social-media prowess has made the relative unimportance of social media in political campaigns all the more obvious (i.e. Internet heavyweight Ron Paul hasn't won a single primary). Ultimately, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube fans consist of reliable supporters, the growing demographic of nonvoting 20-somethings or opposition spectators. Despite the increasing importance of social media in business, there is no solid evidence that it matters in politics.