Candidates’ Message Driven Sites June 19, 2007
Some of the 2008 Presidential hopefuls are campaigning on multiple official sites. In these cases, the candidates are selecting issues on which they're strong.
This strategy has potential as it enables campaigns to make headway by creating a special site to build a community around a specific issue and to project a clear message that can standalone from the rest of the campaign platform.
Here are four of these standalone campaign sites:
- Bill Richardson's No Troops Left Behind
- This site only promotes Richardson's opposition to the war in Iraq and his stance to remove all troops from that country soon. His campaign has a petition where people can show their support for removing the troops and links to other places where potential voters can see him express his stance.
- Joe Biden's Head to Head 08
- On this site the Biden Campaign allows visitors to see YouTube videos of other Democratic presidential hopefuls speak about the same issue in hopes that they'll see how the candidates differ.
- Joe Biden's Plan for Iraq
- A couple years ago the Democrats seem ed disjointed about how to deal with the war in Iraq; the party simply wanted it to end but failed to offer a plan to do so. Senator Biden presented a plan, and he continues to view this as a strength. Thus, his campaign has created a site for this plan.
- John McCain's Mitt vs. Facts (not launched as of this posting)
- On this site, the McCain campaign hopes to expose all the flip flops that Mitt Romney has made. For instance, many conservatives are concerned about how he has taken different stances on immigration and social issues while running for office in Massachusetts versus now that he's running for President.
Are there other political campaign sites like these?
I look forward to see how these highly targeted mini-sites affect the election. Further, I wonder if a site focused on differentiating or digging up dirt about another candidate will have more of an effect than a site that trumps a strong stance of a candidate.
