GOP Gains in Tech Battle

A few months ago, the GOP seemed to be losing the tech battle. Now the Republicans have seized the initiative. At the Washington Examiner, Chris Stirewalt reports:

GOP members of Congress have more than twice as many Twitter followers than their Democratic counterparts and tweet five times more often. Minority Leader John Boehner may look like a character from Mad Men, but the Don Draper of the House has a “director of new media” and more than 30,000 Facebook fans – almost four times as many as Nancy Pelosi.

Look at the Massachusetts Senate race, where Republican insurgent Scott Brown is using the same technologies Obama once did to mount a campaign that might derail the president’s domestic agenda.

Using tweets, text messages and e-mails, Brown raised $1.3 million online in one day and brought together an overflow rally to compete with the president’s stump speech for Democrat Martha Coakley.

At the Huffington Post, David Meerman Scott writes of the Massachusetts race:

Politics and platforms and personal connections are important. But didn't Obama for America teach us that the Web has the power to push a candidate over the top? Obama also showed the importance of young people (whose communications of choice is digital).

Let's look at a few numbers. As I compare the morning before election day, @MarthaCoakley has 3,520 Twitter followers compared to @ScottBrownMA with 10,214 followers. Coakley counts 14,487 Facebook fans to Brown's 76,700 fans. Advantage Brown by more than three to one.

Scott attended the Obama rally for Coakley at Northeastern University. He noticed something missing:

How do college students communicate? Facebook and SMS of course! Yet these two forms of communications played absolutely no formal part in the rally. The brochure that was handed out had no web addresses or social media sites. At the rally, Coakley fans were asked to vote. They were asked to volunteer at phone banks. They were asked to talk to neighbors and friends.

But were the many college students in the crowd told to talk up the Coakley campaign on Facebook, the college student communications tool of choice? No. Were people at the rally asked to tweet? No. Were they asked to join Coakley's fan page? No.

Losing to Win

In Losing to Win, James Ceaser and Andrew Busch analyze the 1996 election in light of political cycles. That is, defeat can lay the groundwork for future victory. Early in 2008, I applied this analysis to the upcoming election, suggesting that the GOP could actually reap long-term gains from a loss. The 2010 election may provide some confirmation. Steve Kornacki writes of Susan's Coakley's various campaign problems and adds:

Had John McCain been elected last year, then all of the above could still be true -- and Coakley would be winning by 30 points. But with Republicans locked out power in Washington, swing voters in Massachusetts -- and every other blue state -- are, for the first time since 1994, ready to blame their problems on Democrats and use the GOP as a protest vehicle. And with 10 percent unemployment, voters have a lot of anger to vent.

Still More Rough Water for Democrats

Things will probably get better for Democrats someday, but first, they're still getting worse.

In Massachusetts, Democratic senatorial candidate has alienated Red Sox fans and Catholics -- in other words, pretty much the entire state electorate.

On the national level, Mark Ambinder observes:

The Allstate/National Journal Heartland Monitor poll released yesterday reported that, while Obama's approval rating remains at a relatively high 61 percent among Hispanics, that's down 21 percent from the April 2009 figure of 81 percent. Hispanic support for the president has dropped more than white support (-15 percent) and black support (-2 percent) over the same time span.

And 41 percent of Hispanics said Obama isn't paying enough attention to the concerns of Hispanics, according to a Pew survey (focusing primarily on blacks' attitudes toward race, released on Tuesday).

A new CNN survey shows the GOP with a 48-45 percent edge in the generic congressional ballot, a change from November, when Democrats led 50-55 percent. Polling director Keating Holland offers some data that are even more disturbing for Democrats:

"That 3-point difference doesn't sound too bad for the Democrats, but the party's numbers are boosted by high levels of support in districts that the GOP has no chance of winning this year," says Holland. "In safe Democratic districts, the Dems have a 21-point advantage over the GOP."

The poll paints a different picture in more competitive districts, those where the incumbent won with less than 55 percent of the vote in 2008. In those districts, the poll indicates Democrats are currently facing a 27-point deficit, with 59 percent of registered voters in the competitive districts now saying they would vote for the Republican candidate for U.S. House if the election were held tomorrow, and only 32 percent that they would choose the Democratic candidate.

"That suggests big losses for the Democrats this November. But keep in mind that there is a lot of white noise in the data, because it is almost impossible to accurately model individual House districts," adds Holland.