YouTube a Key Player on the Campaign Trail

Every day, people of all ages use YouTube to view their favorite music videos, TV spots, and hilarious home movies—pretty much anything they want to see, they can find it on YouTube. The video sharing website has millions of viewers each day, and its popularity is only continuing to rise. On Monday, the site took a big step toward cementing its place in society— YouTube entered the world of politics by co-sponsoring a debate for the Democratic Presidential candidates. 

The YouTube debate, co-sponsored by CNN, allowed viewers to submit questions for the candidates via YouTube. The candidates, assembled at Citadel, a military school in South Carolina, then answered submitted questions live, with CNN’s Anderson Cooper on-hand as a moderator.  So how successful was YouTube’s political debut? On Tuesday, bloggers, television stations, and the candidates themselves deemed the project a success, and there are plans in place for similar endeavors in the future.

While the debate may help the presidential hopefuls as they continue to gain momentum for the ’08 election, two of the Democratic candidates already know just how powerful YouTube can be on the campaign trail, especially when it comes to reaching out to young voters.

Last month, “Obama girl” made her debut on YouTube and her mark on the ’08 campaign with a music video for her song “I’ve Got a Crush on Obama.” A 21 year-old student from Philadelphia recorded and edited the song with a friend, while actress/model Amber Lee Ettinger lip synced the song for the video.  Within two days of being posted on YouTube, the video had received over 3 million hits.  While the Obama camp denies any connection to the video, the free publicity and buzz generated amongst young voters sure can’t hurt the Illinois senator’s campaign.

Also last month, Hilary Clinton used YouTube to ask voters to choose her campaign song. She posted a series of videos that ended up on the site, and announced her song—Cher’s “You and I”—on YouTube during a spoof of the series finale of HBO series The Sopranos. Once again, young voters were left talking about the video, and subsequently generating publicity for Hilary’s campaign.

Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton have certainly gained a few future votes along with the buzz and publicity. According to a poll by CBS News, The New York Times, and MTV posted on political blog “Rock the Vote,” Obama and Clinton have strong support with young voters—18% of 18-29 year-olds backed Obama, 17%, Clinton. Only 4% of these voters said they were behind Republican candidate Rudy Guliani.  Whether or not the results of this poll are directly related to Obama and Clinton’s presence on YouTube, I’m not sure. Although like I said, it certainly hasn’t hurt.