Blogs and Web sites are supplanting door knocks and snail mail in elections around the country, and Tufts is no exception.
The Apr. 20 TCU presidential election showed the increasing utility of the Internet in campus elections. In one surprisingly accurate predictor of the election, the proportions of people in the three candidates' Facebook.com groups mirrored, within five percentage points, the percentage of the total vote those candidates received in the actual election.
Winner Mitch Robinson captured 51.8 percent of the student vote. The day of the election, his Facebook.com group logged 384 members, or 48.1 percent of the total people registered in student campaign groups.
Harish Perkari, the second-place finisher, came out with 32.6 percent support in the election; and his Facebook.com group listed 300 members, or 37.6 percent of total persons registered in student campaign groups.
Third-place candidate Denise Lyn-Shue garnered 15.6 percent in the election and logged 113 members in her Facebook.com group, good for14.7 percent of the total.
Adam Weldai, public relations officer for the Tufts Elections Board (ELBO), views the Internet as the most important campaign tool in the election.
"From my perspective I saw the Internet as the main form of campaigning in this specific election," he said. "Although there were other methods like chalking, signs and T-shirts, I think that the Internet provided the most effective and used form to campaigning this time around.
"Candidates were monitoring their support through Facebook.com groups, advertising in theirs' and others' Facebook pictures," Weldai said. "I've never seen as many campaign emails go out to candidates' chosen 'e-lists' as in this presidential election."
Robinson's campaign manager, senior Robin Liss, said that the Robinson campaign "understood from very early on that the Internet was important."
Robinson highlighted Facebook.com as a key aspect of his campaign.
"It gave you the chance to get an idea of your support group, and also made it easy to communicate." he said, adding that "in retrospect, [the Internet] was really the tool that was going to set us apart."
Outgoing TCU President Jeff Katzin, a senior, also credited the Internet as an important campaigning tool. "The Internet definitely plays a big role," Katzin said. "Whether it's a Web site or a Facebook group, it helps you explain your platform [and] develop and show more of your personality."
All three candidates created Web sites that explained their platforms. The candidates were able to purchase domain names with their ELBO-supplied campaign stipends.
Perkari developed his Web site to help provide additional information for people interested in his campaign.
"When you're campaigning, obviously, people don't want to hear your whole platform right then and there," Perkari said, adding that he distributed fliers and other materials with the Web site address while campaigning.
But Perkari acknowledged the Internet's limitations. "It takes a very specific type of person to want to learn about the candidate through the Web site," he said.
Perkari found Facebook.com to be "mainly another way to just announce candidacy," he said. "People [didn't] necessarily know I was running, and it was a good way to get people interested in the elections.
"A lot of students do spend a lot of time on [the site] on a daily basis," he said, and it only made sense to "take advantage of the fact that it's really popular."
Lyn-Shue highlighted the utility of advertising on Facebook.com
"Facebook ads are also really good," Lyn-Shue said, adding that "sometimes [campaigning] in-person can be better, but it's a good way to get to the people you can't reach in person."
In addition to changing how candidates campaign, the Internet has also changed how members of the student body vote. Weldai said that the fact that the election was held online was one of the factors that helped with the relatively high turnout. ELBO began holding elections online in the spring of 2002.
"I think if the elections weren't online there wouldn't be anywhere near as good a turnout as there is," he said. "Now people can just vote from their room, in bed, in the library - it makes it accessible.
An Apr. 2 article in the New York Times reaffirmed the increasingly visibility of Internet campaigning methods in U.S. politics.
"Democrats and Republicans are sharply increasing their use of e-mail, interactive Web sites, candidate and party blogs, and text messaging to raise money, organize get-out-the-vote efforts and assemble crowds for rallies," the article read. "The Internet, they say, appears to be far more efficient, and less costly, than the traditional tools of politics, notably door knocking and telephone banks."
But despite the increasing prominence of cyber-campaigning, candidates said that original campaign methods cannot be forgotten either.
"It doesn't necessarily mean that they're going to vote for you, or even remember to vote on that day," Perkari said of the Facebook groups.
According to Perkari, the most important aspect is still "meeting people face-to-face."
Yet candidates do agree that the new campaigning realities are here to stay.
"I think it will be at Tufts for a very long time," Robinson said.
