Today political campaigns are no longer about being able to shake every hand in the room but rather about reaching every single person who might wander into a polling place and mark a ballot. With seats at campaign events always limited and with the days and weeks of the average voter being busy enough without the addition of a rally every month, political campaigners have had to reach out to voters where they actually are.
And where are they? For many the answer is they are on their phones, on a social network, or just generally online.
It’s little surprise, then, that the modern political campaign is more and more committed to reaching voters via digital means. Whether advertising on search engines and social media, reaching out to email lists with millions of subscribers, analyzing data for trends and voting intentions, or asking – even begging – for political donations, the internet is often where modern political campaigning lives and dies.