Politics

politics

With Canada heading into the last leg of a federal election that hasn’t excited many people, there’s a growing focus on whether social media is playing a major role.

There’s definitely lots of chatter and the major political parties have embraced Twitter, Facebook and YouTube but the key question is whether it’s doing anything to engage voters, particularly those under 30-years-old who appear bored and disinterested in politics and, as important, voting.

We won’t get a definitive take on the impact of social media until election day on May 2 but anecdotally the hype about the impact of social media is vastly overshadowing whether it will get more people to the polls.

In other words, social media may help us talk more about the election and the politicians but it’s far from clear if all this chatter will translate to more votes. In the Toronto Star yesterday, Jim Rankin had an interesting story that looked at the impact if more people under 30 voted. It suggested the political landscape would be much different because younger voters would support the Liberals, NDP and Green parties rather than the Conservatives.

So if you’re not a fan of the Conservatives and Stephen Harper, social media may be the best hope to encourage people to throw their support behind other political parties. The good news for the Conservatives is social media may have a higher profile during this election, it’s probably not going to translate to more action at election day.

Yesterday, the campaign to become Toronto’s next mayor officially started – a 10-month affair that will cost major candidates at least $1.5-million.

The big question is how much of a role social media will play in a race expected to attract a number of strong candidates. With union and corporate donations recently banned, Toronto’s mayoralty hopefuls must rely on individuals for financial support – something that may prove difficult given the economic conditions and the bitterness still felt by many voters over the garbage strike last summer.

Right now, the candidate with the most social media cred seems to be Rocco Rossi, who has an active Twitter presence and a Facebook Page with 5,101 fans. Of course, Rossi used to be president of Beer.com so you’d expect him to be somewhat Web savvy.

In addition to using social media to raise campaign money, another interesting angle will be if social media can do anything to get more people to vote. Over the past few elections, turnout has been an abysmal 30% to 40% so there’s a major opportunity to leverage social media to get out the vote.

So, let’s see which candidate successfully and effectively embraces social media in the coming months, and whether it will help a long-shot such as Rossi to post a surprising victory.

Can Social Media Jump-Start Democracy?

Will Toronto’s Race for Mayor be a Social One?