Social Media Strategies Win Elections

Political marketing has become a growing facet of marketing that has infiltrated the campaigning of U.S. presidential elections. Within this cognate of marketing, social media has become a major component of predicting election outcomes starting with the 2008 U.S. presidential election.

An analysis of the social media performance of candidates from the 2008 U.S. presidential election to the 2018 midterm elections reveals how the power of social media can be harnessed to increase voter participation, connect voters to offline political activity, and engage voters with candidates on a more personal note. Social media political marketing should further emphasize the candidate’s brand and build followership through targeted messaging to desired segments.

Social media continues to grow in use and bypass direct news sources; therefore, it must complement and create a dialogue with traditional media, as it will likely surpass it someday. From raising money to recruiting volunteers, a strong presence on social media will help your campaign stand out. Leverage your voice on social media to discuss your values and introduce policy proposals. Done well, even standard posts can earn you media coverage.

According to a Pew Research Study published in July 2018, thirty-two percent of Americans have used social media to encourage their friends and followers to take political action. Twenty-four percent of Democrats have used social media to learn more about an offline protest or rally and thirty-nine percent of users say that social media helps them get politically engaged. Simply put, your campaign cannot afford to neglect its social media presence.

But running social media for your campaign is a little different than handling your personal Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram presence. Instead of just posting when you feel like it and sharing small snippets of your life, the voice of your campaign online needs to be strategic and planned.

Something’s Happening in Texas - Final 2018 Midterm Results

Congratulations Democrats and Progressives — You Won. Do not accept any narrative other than one of a big win from hard-fought campaigns.

Democrats elected an unprecedented number of women, including two Muslim women, turned at least 6 state legislatures blue, demanded the Medicaid Expansion to Obamacare in three red states, and passed referendums in favor of recreational and medical marijuana and an increased minimum wage in several states.

More than half of eligible voters in the U.S. turned out to cast a ballot in the 2018 midterm elections, a record-high in modern history. Michael McDonald, an associate professor of political science at the University of Florida, estimates that 118 million people voted in the midterms, about 50.1 percent of eligible voters. That turnout is about 11 points higher than the average for midterm turnout of 39.4 percent in at least the past three decades, since 18- to 20-year-olds became eligible to vote. In 2014, 83 million people turned out to vote. That’s the highest recorded rate for the midterms since 1914 when turnout was 50.4% and women didn’t have the vote.

Unprecedented Midterm Election Early Turnout - Is It Enough?

Americans cast in-person and absentee ballots during early voting this year at rates unprecedented for midterm elections since early voting was instituted. With the conclusion of early voting, almost 35 million ballots have already cast nationwide, with Election Day still to go.

In 22 states, including Texas, and Washington, D.C., with an early voting period more people voted early than did so in the last midterm election, reports the New York Times. That means more people have cast a ballot over 12 days of early voting in those counties than turned out for the entire 2014 midterm election. And early voter turnout has surpassed that from the 2012 presidential election.

Texas Early Turnout Day 8 - Blue Wave Yet?

Going into the second week of early voting, it has become increasingly clear Texas is in the midst of an unprecedented turnout midterm election. Texans in some Texas counties have waited in lines for hours to cast their votes. The result has been record-breaking midterm vote totals across the state.

As of Monday, day eight of early voting, 3,354,029 Texans have cast in-person and by-mail in ballots in the 30 counties where most registered voters in the state — 78 percent — live. That preliminary turnout has surpassed the total votes cast in those counties during the entire two-week early voting period in the last midterm election in 2014. So far this year, 27.4 percent of the 12.26 million registered voters in those 30 counties have voted.


We still have too little data to predict the specific election outcomes or the long-term effect of this unprecedented outpouring of voter interest, but we know for certain that Texans are fired up and ready to vote. This state generally sees fewer than 39 percent of registered voters regularly participating in midterm elections.

Voter participation in this year is nearly three times that of the 2014 midterm and is near the pace set during the 2016 presidential election. assuming turnout will continue at the pace set during early voting, total turnout for this election will likely top 60 percent of record high number of registered voters

Historically, midterms have been viewed as a referendum on the party occupying the White House. This political axiom seems magnified this year as Donald Trump has made every effort to nationalize this midterm. Trump’s name is not on the ballot, but the president clearly is casting a big shadow on this election.

Texas Early Turnout Day 4 - Blue Wave Yet?

Early voting in 2018 midterm general election turnout and enthusiasm are unusually strong among both Republicans and Democrats across the U.S., including Texas.

As of day three of early voting, 1,344,741 Texans have cast in-person ballots and 240,601 cast mail-in ballots in the 30 counties where most registered voters in the state — 78 percent — live. That turnout equals 79 percent of the total votes cast in those counties during the entire two-week early voting period in the last midterm election in 2014.

So far this year, 12.9 percent of the 12.3 million registered voters in those 30 counties have voted. If turnout rates remain at these levels, we could see presidential election year turnout levels across Texas and the U.S., which would be virtually unprecedented.

What A Texas Blue Wave Might Look Like

Texas Democrats have been losing midterm elections by more or less a two-to-one turnout margin since Ann Richards lost her 1994 Gubernatorial re-election to George Bush. Democrats can chalk up their long losing streak to one thing: Only about one in three Texans registered to vote have cast ballots in midterm elections over the last quarter century, and it's Democrats who haven’t been turning out at the polls.

Trump Distracts While Appointees Sledgehammer Government

With nearly every utterance, Donald Trump affirms the conclusion we reached two years ago that he is temperamentally and intellectually unfit to serve as president of the United States. But there he is, a year after his inauguration, waging a war of words with the world from behind the Resolute desk in the Oval Office. He has denigrated fellow citizens and international allies; threatened nuclear war; undermined public faith in the judiciary, Congress, and the media; found some “very fine people” at a gathering of neo-Nazis; and dispensed utterly with the idea of presidential gravitas.

In fact, there’s been so much public attention paid to his tweets, to his character and temperament, to the ongoing investigations into how he came to power, that close scrutiny has sometimes lagged into what this administration has actually done.

Click here to read the rest of the story at the LA Times:

Trump Promised To Defend Forgotten Americans - Then He Forgot Them

The Donald Trump presidency is now one year old and in many respects ― the unhinged tweeting, the contempt for democratic norms, the potential collusion with a hostile foreign power ― it has been unlike any presidency in history.

But there is one respect in which Trump’s tenure in office has been rather ordinary: his administration’s year-long effort to push familiar Republican initiatives that shift money and power towards corporations and the rich, and away from everybody else.

No, this is not the kind of presidency that Trump promised. As a candidate, he portrayed himself as a different sort of Republican, one who would attack the financial industry, govern independently of wealthy special interests, and protect public programs on which poor and middle-class Americans depend.

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Ten Ways Trump And Congress Have Hurt Workers

The tax cut law that President Trump boasts will make his wealthy friends “a lot richer” is just the latest in a series of betrayals of working people by the administration and Congress since Trump took the oath of office on January 20, 2017. In addition to passing a massive tax cut for wealthy business owners, Trump and Republicans in Congress have rolled back important worker protections, advanced nominees to key administration posts who have a history of exploiting working people, and taken other actions that further rig the system in favor of corporate interests and the wealthiest Americans.

Click Here for the 10 worst things Congress and Trump have done to undermine pay growth and erode working conditions for the nation’s workers.

Key Voting Law Faces Big Test At U.S. Supreme Court

In November of 2015, Larry Harmon, a software engineer then in his late 50s, went to the polls to vote against an Ohio ballot initiative to legalize marijuana.

It had been a few years since Harmon voted. He cast a ballot for President Barack Obama in 2008, but didn’t particularly care for the candidates in 2010, 2012 or 2014, so he didn’t vote. When he went to the polls for the marijuana initiative in 2015, officials said he couldn’t vote. He had been removed from the voter rolls. Even though he had lived at the same address for well over a decade, officials wouldn’t let Harmon cast a provisional ballot and so he left his polling place without voting, went home and later wrote an angry letter to Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted (R).

Ohio officials removed Harmon from the voter rolls in part because he failed to vote in federal elections over six consecutive years. One of the ways Ohio polices its voter rolls is by sending a confirmation notice to anyone who fails to vote in a federal election after two years. If the person fails to respond to that notice and also fails to vote over the next four years, they get removed from the rolls.

That process is being challenged in a consequential case the Supreme Court will hear on Wednesday: Husted v. A. Philip Randolph Institute. Harmon and civil rights groups argue the Ohio process violates federal law, which explicitly says people can’t be removed from the rolls just because they haven’t voted. Husted and others who defend the law say Ohio’s process is reasonable because people aren’t removed just for not voting ― they have to fail to respond to the mailer as well.

A Supreme Court ruling on the legality of the process could help clarify how aggressively states can purge their rolls and the limits the federal government can set on how states maintain lists of eligible voters.

Read the full story at Huffington Post