Does the internet win elections? It’s the wrong question to ask

I first started doing online political campaigning before the first tweet about breakfast was sent, before the first Facebook status update about reality TV was posted and before the first cute cat appeared on YouTube. All through that time questions along the lines of, “But is it worth it?”, “Can you win elections by using the internet?” and “Aren’t elections all about leaflets?” have been a regular feature.

Over the years I’ve come up with a variety of answers, all pretty much of the same sort – using the internet is important, it’s becoming even more important but it’s not the only thing you need to do.

But I’ve now got a new answer to all those sorts of questions: “You’re asking the wrong question”.

If you are doing internet campaigning really well, it ends up being so closely entwined with your offline campaigning that you can no longer tell the difference between the impact of one and the other.

Your email campaigning depends on your door knocking to gather email addresses; your door knocking depends on your use of social media to mobilise volunteers; your use of social media depends on your face to face training of key activists; your face to face training of key activists depends on seeing what works online for others; and so on and on.

Take any one strand of activity and you will find online and offline so closely bound together, so mutually supportive, that trying to separate out one from the other is impossible.

When you’re doing it right, you can no longer separate out your online and offline campaigning. Asking about the relative importance of one compared to the other becomes as meaningless as asking how important vowels are compared to consonants for a piece of writing. Neither can prosper on their own; both have their biggest impact when combined.

To find out more about how to combine them well, of course, take a look at 101 Ways To Win An Election.