Tuesday’s election is over and the generally consensus is that most Republicans are still kind of shocked at the outcome. What happened?
Here are 5 key points that most likely won the election for President Obama:
1. Money doesn’t automatically buy an outcome or an election. Hundreds of millions of dollars were spent on advertising , but it could not guarantee the outcome that Mitt Romney desired. The ads probably had an effect on some people, but in the end it wasn’t the ROI that the GOP was counting on.
2. Facebook is really powerful. The Obama campaign didn’t just thrown up a bunch of static ads on Facebook and hope for the best. Instead they used Facebook to actively connect with real-live supporters to urge them to get out and vote. Apparently this strategy worked.
3. Math won. Making a decision based on a hunch or intuition is perfectly legitimate. However, you can’t ignore hard data. In the days leading up to the election, Nate Silver was criticized by certain pundits about his analysis of the polling data. However, as we know now, Mr. Silver accurately predicted the Presidential winner in 50 out of 50 states.
4. You can’t ignore changing demographics. The post-election consensus is that the GOP did not do a good job in connecting with young voters or minority voters, and instead focused too much on white males. The GOP has openly acknowledged that this is a problem and has indicated that they’re going to need to address this problem to try and change public perception.
5. Social media is now mainstream. In the 2008 election, social media was still relatively new to most people. But the Obama campaign’s use of social media in 2008 was largely credited for their victory 4 years ago. In 2012, political analysts are saying that this year’s social media campaign by President Obama’s team makes 2008 look like child’s play.
For additional details, please see:
5 Lessons Marketers Can Learn From Obama’s Victory
