Longtime readers of techPresident know we love looking at YouTube political videos because the site offers so much interesting data about what people are watching, how videos are being shared, and so on. And while we haven’t yet seen the break-out satirical mashups that charmed so many politics junkies back in 2007-08, there’s plenty to be learned from a look at how the various presidential candidates and related national political figures are doing on YouTube.
For starters, consider President Barack Obama’s YouTube channel, which has reverted to campaign mode. While it hasn’t yet cranked up to the daily volume we saw four years ago, Obama’s channel is now featuring more of the mini-documentary videos on the stories of his campaign’s supporters and their causes (not the policy jockeys in the White House) that were its stock in trade back then. The popularity of certain videos, like this one celebrating the end of “don’t ask, don’t tell” on September 20, also offers clear evidence that segments of Obama’s base–in this case gay rights supporters–are attracted to this part of his message.
Below, you can see TubeMogul’s tracking info for daily views of Obama’s video channel, going back three months. I’ve also included (in red) the track for the White House’s official YouTube channel. As you can see, Obama’s most recent bump comes on Sept. 20, on the signing of the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell.” The larger bump on the White House channel is from his post-Labor Day address to Congress on the jobs issue. And going further back, both channels show a very large bump at the beginning of August, at the climax of his showdown with the Republicans over the debt ceiling extension.
The number of views on Obama’s campaign channel are reasonably healthy (100,000+ on the “don’t ask” video, for example, and half a million on his post-debt-ceiling video). But his channel isn’t the only one on the Democratic side that’s drawing real attention. Take for example this viral video on newly declared Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren, explaining her philosophy of government, taxes and class warfare. It’s soared to more than a half million views in less than two weeks. Most appear to be coming from supporters, though the linkage from Rush Limbaugh doesn’t hurt either:
Steve Benen notes that the popularity of Warren’s defense of government has trickled up to Obama’s recent stump speeches; details here.
Meanwhile, In GOP-Land
Not surprisingly, the Republican activist base is quote engaged with its presidential candidates right now. This announcement video by Rick Perry, for example, has garnered more than a half million views in just one week.
That one video by Perry has garnered more views than the roughly thirty different videos uploaded by the Mitt Romney campaign in the last three months. But we already knew that Romney wasn’t exactly catching fire with the Republican base, though he has been getting somewhere in the range of the mid-five-figures to check out most of his videos of late.
Where else can you find Republican activist passion around presidential candidates on YouTube? Not surprisingly, there’s a decent chunk around Ron Paul. This campaign video has almost 300,000 views, and there’s also an unofficial channel called RonPaul2008dotcom that is an outgrowth of his last campaign that is also continuing to drive some attention his way:
As for the other Republican contenders, in order of their relative heft in YouTube-land, Herman Cain’s wacky style has bought him some six-figure attention but it’s hard to take him seriously; Michelle Bachmann appears to be floundering after her campaign launch video garnered a healthy 250,000 views; Gary Johnson is doing better than expected given how he’s been shut out of most news coverage; Newt Gingrich is wallowing in the low-four-digits for most of his campaign YouTube videos (despite having a mammoth web presence on Twitter); and Rick Santorum makes Gingrich’s numbers look strong (no bump for him after the last Republican debate, where some thought he did better than expected). And my favorite long-shot dark-horse candidate, Buddy Roemer, has yet to strike a chord online.