Social Media blew up on election day! You could not check your Facebook or Twitter feed without being flooded with posts about the election. Everyone was trying to claim who the better candidate was and trying to argue with other people about who to vote for. I personally avoided posting anything on Facebook or Twitter about the election but from the screenshots in the slideshow below you can tell it was almost the only thing people were talking about. I did, however, participate in the Facebook "It's Election Day" campaign which you can see the screenshots for below as well. That involved showing which of your friends also voted, an up-to-date ticker of how many people voted, a chart about how many voted on the hour, figures about male vs. female voters, and a chart about the age of the voters. Obama and Romney both have Facebook pages. Obama updated his throughout election day and as the results came in. He posted "Four more years" with an image of him and his wife when it became clear that he was to win. He also posted updates about getting out there to vote. Romney, on the other hand did not post that much on election day. What he did post included an ad about calling people to encourage them to vote, images telling people to vote, and images of him and his wife voting.
Twitter was going crazy! Everyone was tweeting and re-tweeting. Romney tweeted most of the day about getting out there and voting and Obama did the same. Obama, with over 22 million followers, tweeted the same post from Facebook about getting four more years. He also thanked his followers for voting for him and tweeted about poll closing hours to encourage people to get out there before it was too late. A trend that sparked on election day was #StayInLine which Obama also tweeted to his followers to encourage the voters that were standing in long lines to stick through it to cast their vote. Along with Obama, people all over Twitter were tweeting for voters to stay in line and to not give up. Romney, who has almost 1.8 million followers, tweets were his last ditch efforts to get people to get out and vote. He tweeted things like "We can't afford four more years" and "With your help, we will turn our country about" throughout the day. His Twitter page fell silent as the results started to roll in and it became clear the Obama would have his four more years.
Obama spent $52,006,072 on his online campaign vs Romney's $26,230,293. It looks like it paid off. The amount of followers had something to do with it too. The next election's candidates shouldn't neglect social media at all. There's a lot of votes there that could be their's.
The slideshow below includes some screenshots of Yahoo's and YouTube's election day coverage and Obama's Facebook and Twitter pages, Romney's Facebook and Twitter pages. Also included are some screenshots of words that were trending on Twitter on election day and a meme that I thought was pretty funny.
Some pretty cool infographics:
