Well, I’ve been avoiding blogging about it for months, since I’m in no way a political expert, but I just can’t ignore the historic news of the last 24 hours, as America has elected its 44th president. It’s confirmed, the next US president is to be Barack Obama, and the world has gone through the genuinely historic moment of America electing their first black president.
However, this is a mobile phones blog, and I’d be a bit remiss (and shouted at) if I did a story that has NOTHING to do with mobile phones.
Lucky for me, then, that Barack Obama’s campaign has embraced technology, including mobile phones, like no other campaign in history! So, this blog post is going to be a bit schizophrenic, as I talk about how mobile phones helped Obama win, then how I feel personally about him winning.
So, technology…
Well, obviously, Obama was going to have a website. Everyone and every organisation has a website in the modern world. Even my old band had a website. But it wasn’t just his website. Obama’s campaign embraced social networking too, with a heavy presence on sites like Facebook and Myspace, not to mention the Obama channel on Youtube. It was clear from the start that his campaign wasn’t just going to be won on the campaign trail, but in the digital world, as well.
Oh, and with mobile phones. Or, more specifically, text messages. You see people all round the world are using their mobile phones more and more, and turning them off less and less (remember that Nokia survey in America?). For a lot of people, their mobile phones are becoming their first source of info, always on, and always bringing them the news. Think of how many text alerts you can get, for things like football scores, world news, financial news, horoscopes, jokes…
…and updates on Barack Obama’s campaign, which really took mobile phones to heart. Want an example? Well, how about the announcement of his running mate, Joe Biden, where 2.9 million text messages were sent out to people signed up to receive them. That’s being hailed as the biggest text marketing event ever!
To go back to the original question in the title, did that text marketing, and the campaign’s embracing of mobile phones allow Obama to win? Well, there’s a compelling story from Bloomberg News, that seems to back up the claim. And it’s all down to something called GOTV, a tactic that all election campaigns ever have used and will use, till the end of time.
Simply, it stand for Get Out The Voters, and it essentially means simply making sure people bother to turn out to cast their vote. In the past, we’ve seen things like arranging transport for voters, and door to door campaigns, to make people get their backsides out to the voting booths. With Obama’s campaign, the way they did it involved lots of text messages.
I can only imagine what they said, but I would bet it was more professional than ‘Gt ur as 2 votn boof’.
Using mobile phones is very probably the cheapest and most effective way to get the message out (get out there and vote!) to the largest number of people, and it’s that text campaign that’s being held up as being responsible for the massive turnout to this year’s elections.
So, to answer the question in the title, in short terms, mobile phones helped Barack Obama to win the presidential race (imagine that: a Sony Ericsson X1 deciding the fate of the free world!). It seems incredibly likely that mobile phones made sure that more people voted. But mobile phones aren’t the sole reason why he won, and neither is Youtube, or the massive use of blogs and social networking.
The biggest factor in why Barack Obama won can be described in two words:
Barack Obama.
The simple fact is this: I believe, and always have believed, he’s the best man for the job. He is smart, yes, and granted, he’s an astute politician, but he genuinely comes across as a likeable, intelligent, and more importantly, level-headed man (as opposed to George Bush, who comes across like an incompetent, war-mongering chimp).
As our very own WinstonSmith has pointed out in his various posts about surveillance, Phorm and passports being needed to buy mobile phones, the current political climate (especially in the UK) is one of hysteria and fear. They would have us believe the end of the world is but 3 seconds away. Cooler heads are needed to rule the world. After all, consider John F. Kennedy, a man I believe to be one of the greatest leaders the world has ever seen.
Would the Cuban Missile Crisis have ended up as it did (i.e. everyone not getting wiped out by a massive, fiery, nuclear holocaust), if he’d been a man who was inclined to panic. No, he was calm, he was rational, he was a true leader.
I may well get flamed to a crisp for comparing him to JFK, but I see the exact same qualities in Barack Obama. Whilst we can’t blame governments for the financial crisis (that would be rich bankers’ faults), we can hold them accountable for removing our civil liberties and curtailing our freedom of speech, in the name of ‘protecting us from terrorists’. Barack Obama doubtless has a tough time ahead of him, but in my judgment, he is the man for the job, and he has the calm, level head needed to not panic and imprison his entire country.
And let’s face it, for a country that had segregation of black people as little as 40 years ago, the sheer fact that they’ve elected a black president is both uplifting and historic. The population have done as they should, ignored both candidates’ skin colours, and voted Obama in on the simple fact that he is the most likely to make a good job of it. That’s what the world should be like, all the time!
So, I’d like to extend my own congratulations to Barack Obama. In the end, you earned this, and I genuinely reckon you’ll make a very good president; and since things that happen in America tend to trickle down and affect the rest of the world, don’t let us down!
And finally, after my baffled anger at Americans voting in George Bush (twice, for heaven’s sake!), I can finally say something I never thought I would: after this election, America, I’m proud of you!
And on a final, final note, Sarah Palin still scares me…
Who’d have thought mobile phones could change the world?! Grab yourself a world-changer today!