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Virginia governor's race and the Google blast

I haven't come across other stories on the 'Net localizing the impact of technology on state or local political races, so I wrote one here, for the RTD, called "Online ads in Va. gubernatorial race ‘set the standard’"

Basically a lot of campaign consultants said that Virginia's governor's race was the first time we saw every candidate use online advertising in an integrated, focused way. Politics in Virginia is huge and there's a ton of voices out there, which you can see by the volume of political blogs, Facebook interactions with Bob McDonnell and Creigh Deeds' fan pages, and money pumped into online ads.

Both candidates for governor used a Google network blast to saturate the web with their faces right before people headed to the polls, Deeds in the democratic primary and McDonnell in the general election.

They won.

So is that a winning strategy? Maybe, maybe not.
One consultant told me that when you're ahead, you might as well spend a few tens of thousands of $$ to brand your guy online in a final push. I didn't really get to this in the story but at least it's a start.

Targeting us: political ads source lists

This article by Kate Kaye of Clickz looks at voter files, the lists of potential voters that campaigns keep. In the online world, a campaign can target likely voters or some demographic group with ads that drive the viewer to donate or vote. The methods of compiling a robust list use traditional public sources like secretaries of state, Kaye says, but also include behavioral clues from web searches and online keywords. Interesting....

The Political Ad Practice Insiders Want to Keep Secret - ClickZ

Facebooking their way into the Governor's mansion

My print contribution to our news coverage of the 2009 race for Virginia governor. Just like in every official poll, Bob McDonnell was beating Creigh Deeds on social media sites:

Gubernatorial campaigns rely on social media | Richmond Times-Dispatch

Preview:

As the two men campaigning for Virginia governor make last-minute sound bites to get out the vote on Tuesday, the virtual cocktail parties they host on their Facebook fan pages have exploded in activity.

Both campaigns have rolled out Facebook pages, Twitter accounts, YouTube videos and other social media tools to reach voters over the course of the race, in addition to their primary Web sites....