Disconnect Between Online Activities and Voting

In my last post I found myself obsessing over the current Presidential campaign and lamenting the fact that Obama and his campaign appear to be doing a much better job at harnessing technology to gain support. I shared the Obama Girl link with others and wondered about the future of “Hillary Tube” and whether her campaign (or at the very least, some crazy Hillary fan like me) could generate a Hillary Boy to counteract the power of the all mighty Obama Girl.

Well, imagine my delight upon hearing the news –repeated incessantly by the “if it bleeds, it leads” media pundits – that our viral icon poster girl failed to vote! Oh happy day. Poor thing was too sick to get to the polls, but did manage to find her way to the Svedka Fembot Election Returns PARTY in New York City that night. Mmmnn.This begs the question of how much of the online hype about Obama is actually real? Yes, Obama won the MySpace poll, but was that poll made up of 15 year old girls with a crush? Was Obama Girl just in this for her 5 minutes of fame? If so, it looks like she just upped her fame factor another 5 minutes by NOT voting.

Seems to me that there is still a bit of a disconnect between online activity and what actually drives voters physically to the polls. Could it be that while people may enjoy participating in the online chats, blogs and townhall discussions taking place in cyberspace, they are not as motivated to push themselves away from their computers and leave the house to go vote? Or is it simply a matter of age demographics?

Since online activity favors the youth vote, we will have to wait and see. Several things I’ve stumbled across in the last few days that gave me pause for thought:

1) Hillary garnered the bulk of the votes in the technology capital of Silicon Valley
2) Hillary split the youth vote in CA and won the youth vote in AR and NY
3) In Second Life, the members signed up for Obama and Clinton groups are representative of the mainstream Democratic population – split 50/50.

Sure, Obama won big this weekend, and I won’t pretend I’m uneasy about what’s ahead for the Hillary campaign but (lest you think Obama has a lock on hope and inspiration) I’m still HOPEful.