In Iowa, Your Blog Had Better Be On The Radio

Not a day goes by without some sort of story about New Media popping up on the political news sites. It is widely hailed as the new path for campaign design and execution. A great deal of scrutiny has been leveled at candidates' online strategies, with good reason. The campaigns do it too; they can't wait to tell you about this new web tool for organizing they have, or how many MySpace friends they are up to. A whole subculture has grown up around New Media, technology, and campaigns. So why aren't people in Iowa plugged in?

The answer is simple. These are voters that skew older demographically and have an entrenched, socialized political tradition, if not a full blown independent political culture. Adopting to new things, like blogs or MySpace, just really isn't part of the game plan for this generation of voters, and with few exceptions that isn't likely to change. Newspapers, television, and radio continue to dominate election coverage for likely caucus-goers. That doesn't answer the question, though, of why campaigns would dedicate resources to an Iowa New Media campaign.

On the surface, it seems counter-intuitive. Why would a campaign put so much effort into online operations when they fall flat or don't carry many users in Iowa, arguably the most important primary state? Obviously the technological infrastructure has to be there after the caucuses are over, but all of the email blasts and automated text messages in the world may not make the difference in Iowa.

But privately, campaign aides say the ramped-up Internet efforts are intended to build buzz and positive press, with little expectation that they will translate directly into votes. (Mr. Dean, once considered the 2004 Democratic front-runner, finished third in Iowa.)

And that may be the difference. While the internet plays a larger role in some of the other primary states, in Iowa it is specifically set for the coinciding positives, the upshots that go along with putting your best e-foot forward. It also allows you to tune your online strategy for later states so that when — or, in the case of this year, if — the campaign gets to three weeks into January, the machine is well-oiled and ready to go.

This kind of report and the polls included therein strengthen the argument that the time of the internet is coming, and it has arrived in many places and situations, but the generation gap in specific arenas like Iowa prevent it from being the silver bullet it is sometimes lauded to be. You can't count on it to deliver votes in Iowa, but you can count on it to be an effective part of a presidential campaign strategy that, just like anything else, must be constantly retooled and adjusted to reflect current political realities. Also, if another state more receptive to online campaigning gets set ahead of Iowa, like New Hampshire, the extant New Media program both there and in Iowa will be a campaign advantage for the prepared team.