The GOP appears to be Tweeting its way to victory in the contentious Massachusetts Senate race between Sen. Scott Brown and Democratic Attorney General Martha Coakley.
According to Carly Carioli of Ad Age, Brown has been “aggressive” on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, while Coakley is failing to make a serious online impact.
“On Twitter, @scottbrownMA has 10,765 followers vs. @MarthaCoakley with 3,657; on Facebook, it’s 83,535 friends to 15,573; and on YouTube, Mr. Brown has a souped-up channel with 675,208 views, while videos posted by the Coakley campaign have been viewed 76,805 times.”
Colin Delany of Epolitics.com explained that the Internet has “opened a whole new community” for Brown to tap by allowing Conservative activists around the country to send the senator donations of up to $1 million per day.
“The fact that Scott Brown is even in the game at all is a testament in part to the power of the Internet to help an insurgent candidate bootstrap himself up to the point of being more than competitive with an establishment darling,” wrote Delany.
“In this case, it’s helped an obscure state senator thrill conservative activists from coast to coast and threaten the future of a president’s top legislative priority [health care].”
Jordan Raynor, a Florida-based Republican online strategist, concurred.
“It’s absolutely the quickest, most accessible, most open platform for sharing information on the Web,” Raynor told Politics Nation.
“Twitter by nature makes information valuable, if it’s valuable information. If you’ve got a juicy piece of news it’s going to spread fastest through Twitter.”
Although Republicans may be basking in the 140 character glory of Twitter, Democrats are quick to point out that the GOP is doing little but playing catch up.
”A lot of folks are following the lead of the Obama campaign,” claimed DNC press secretary Hari Sevugan. ”We set that standard in terms of innovation and I think people are looking at that model.”
Nevertheless, it is indisputable that Twitter has once again proven itself a critical variable in the broader online equation in which political success is measured and decided.
Indeed, as the Boston Globe notes, the US Senate race is poised to reach a “thunderous finish” as voters cast ballots that could thwart Barack Obama’s health-care plan and permanently alter the course of his troubled presidency.
