The other day on TechPresident.com, Micah L. Sirfry discussed the interesting argument on whether or not the media is inflating the impact that social media is having on the upcoming presidential election.

From followers “liking” candidates on Facebook to online fundraising contributions, is the action on the web really influencing the race to the Oval Office? Does every person on Twitter equate to a ballot submitted on Election Day?

Sirfy states that, “Politics isn’t only about voting; it’s more deeply about organizing to get and keep power. And the evidence that social media is helping organized groups get more power–sometimes more than their raw numbers might get them at the ballot box–is staring us in the face.”

At Fundly, we would have to agree with Sirfy. At the end of the 2010 election cycle, 120 political customers were using Fundly to raise money and currently our numbers show 10 times that amount. The campaigns have ranged from local races to the presidential efforts of Rick Santorum, Mitt Romney and a Newt Gingrich PAC. Candidates also successfully raised $71 million for the 2010 midterm elections.

Now let’s move beyond dollars. Sirfy brings up the interesting point that the nomination for the Republican presidential candidate is still up in the air in large part because of the role that social media is playing in creating factions among the conservative party. There are dozens of groups on Facebook that are backing the politician of their choice and there is even a social network that has more than 168,000 users who are largely beyond the control of any Republican organization.

In an ironic turn of the internet, not only is technology bringing more people of like-mindedness together, it is dividing the GOP. While the Republican Party is getting a ton of press for the Super PACs that are changing the landscape of political fundraising, an arsenal of small donors are also equipping the candidates with the funds to pursue the office of Commander in Chief. “On Fundly, a social fundraising site, the Rick Santorum page has nearly 3,000 donors who have built personal fundraising pages generating an average of about $80 each. By contrast, Romney has two donors who have created personal fundraising pages on the site, one of whom is his son Tagg” sites Sirfry.

So let’s get back to the original question at hand: do high numbers on Facebook equal high numbers of voters at the polls?

When so many people have invested their time, finances and opinions concerning the political scene, I can’t imagine them abandoning the cause at the apex of the battle.

In the early 1980’s when I was about 6 years old my dad ran for County Supervisor. I remember wearing frilly dresses and going to political parties. We ordered hundreds of bright blue and neon orange signs that said “Leadership for the 80’s” and put them up in friends’ yards and on busy street corners.  We canvassed neighborhoods knocking on voter’s doors and had a phone call list a mile long with friends and family members spreading the word. He lost that race and ten years later we repeated the cycle when he ran for School Board (and unfortunately lost that election, too.) He’s not planning to pursue any more of his political ambitions; however, I’m still glad political fundraisingmethods have changed.

There was an article in The New York Times last week written by Jim Rutenberg and Jeff Zeleny which discussed how President Obama has created an almost corporate-like atmosphere as he pursues a second term as president. Like a well-oiled Silicon Valley techno-machine, his workers are busily scouting out past donors who gave in the beginning and are currently missing in action. “Mr. Obama’s re-election team is sifting through reams of data available through the Internet or fed to it by its hundreds of staff members on the ground in all 50 states, identifying past or potential supporters and donors and testing e-mail and Web-based messages that can entice them back into the fold” reports Rutenger and Zeleny.

President Obama, along with his Republican competitors, realizes that much of the campaigning to win the race will be done on the internet. “With the help of Web developers recruited from the private sector, [the campaign] has dedicated considerable hours creating technology that can make its Web site, barackobama.com, fit perfectly onto any screen, be it an iPhone, Blackberry or Droid — a seemingly small detail that campaign officials say can make a huge difference when it comes to enticing donors or volunteers to stay connected or click a ‘donate’ button” observes Rutenger and Zeleny.

Not by chance or trial and error, but through tangible reports, facts and figures is science being applied to the partnership of politics and social media. No longer are politicians from City Hall to the White House relying on knocking on doors to shake hands with the voters or passing out leaflets boasting of their past accomplishments and future goals. Today’s campaign trail is littered with crisp mailers, a path of Tweets and Facebook fodder to reach the masses and Fundly is proud to be a part of the future of political fundraising.

As I think back to the Constitution and the original form of our government in its essence of democratic purity, I can’t help but wonder what our forefathers would think of the current electoral process.

Would they be aghast at the immense amount of cash raised and spent? Would they be flabbergasted at political fundraising mixed with the advancement of technology? How would they feel about Super PACs? However, I also ponder if these questions are fair to pose in an apples-to-oranges comparison. In a world in which powdered wigs, wooden teeth and only male voters existed, do the same principles apply?

In a new Washington Post-ABC News poll, it was found that 69% of voters believe that PACs should be banned. Furthermore, 78% of independent voters believe that they should be eliminated. Do PACs really deserve such a bad rap?

Restore Our Future, the super PAC supporting former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, has already spent nearly $34 million in early presidential primary states on his behalf. Winning Our Future, a super PAC associated with former House speaker Newt Gingrich, has already gone through $16 million. President Obama is also gaining momentum using a PAC; Priorities USA Action is in effect and is run by two former White House aides.

The Washington Post reports that, “All told, super PACs have raised more than $130 million and spent $75 million in the 2012 election cycle, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Given that the 2012 election isn’t for another eight months or so and that super PACs focused on House races have already begun to crop up, it’s easy to see that number cresting $500 million or even nearing $1 billion before the election is over.

What does the future hold for political fundraising? Online fundraising through sites like Fundly are at an all time high and the candidates are spending time, money and strategic planning on optimizing social networking. We’ll just have to wait and see how technology and major donor giving influences the outcome of the presidential election in November.

It’s impossible to watch the news these days and not see a report about the upcoming 2012 Presidential Election. Regardless of your candidate of choice or party affiliation, you have to admit the contenders are giving it all they’ve got to win the office at hand.  From kissing babies to Google ads, this election is an interesting blend of old and new fundraising tactics.

While television debates, benefit dinners, and rallies are tried and true methods of gaining voter approval, what has truly sparked my interest is how these candidates are connecting with people that can now have their voices heard using social media. By the end of this election, the unchartered waters of online political fundraising will be vastly explored by these electoral pioneers.

In a recent report published by Fundly, we found that online political fundraising is being utilized like never before. We have had three of the presidential hopefuls as clients, plus one thousand other political figures petitioning for various offices. Due to our political clientele on both party lines, we are able to accumulate facts and figures pertaining to online fundraising in a way that has not been possible in previous years. As such, we have found that by the end of January 2012 political online fundraising had increased 53 percent as compared to the previous year. Furthermore, we saw that the daily social fundraising volume in January exceeded December’s average volume by more than 350 percent.

There is a good question that arises amid all of the controversies surrounding the use of PAC’s: will even more focus be placed on social media fundraising as candidates strive to gain public approval? The time, energy and finances invested into procuring funds can be vastly diminished with the launch of a simple Facebook page, some daily tweets on Twitter and taking a few minutes to start a campaign donation page on Fundly.

So why should you use Fundly as part of your campaign strategy? When a stranger asks for money, it’s easy and probable for people to answer “no, thanks.” When a friend asks for money, there is a foundation and level of trust in the relationship which usually produces a positive response like, “sure, I’d love to!”  Friends are also more open to supporting a candidate and hearing their positions when recommended by a friend. This is the basic idea of social fundraising and Fundly helps your campaign reap the benefits. When a donor contributes to your candidate through Fundly, that action can be posted to their Facebook and Twitter profiles to share with their network of friends, family, and colleagues. Not only are they bringing attention to your campaign, but a call of support to their entire social network. The average person has well over 100 friends on Facebook and now you have over 100 potential donors.

While the focus of political fundraising has mainly been on the presidential race, what we are learning from this election can be applied to campaigns for smaller offices, such as mayor, school board advisor, and the like. With Fundly, it’s easy for candidates to set up a website, gather supporter information, and start collecting donations. Regardless of the political position, the methods of fundraising are the same; it’s just a different scale.

Fundly is proud to announce that we have published the first ever index that measures the social fundraising activity across the social web during the 2012 campaign cycle. The candidates are consistently and creatively using social media to gain supporters and dollars and we are excited to be a part of this historical event concerning technology in partnership with the electoral process.

“Social fundraising” is a term that we use often, but for those who aren’t familiar, social fundraising is peer-to-peer fundraising leveraging Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other social media networks to share causes and create an opportunity to build engagement and increase donations through online communities. It’s connecting with donors through using the internet and accomplishing what time, energy and finances rarely allow.

With this in mind, many candidates are actively making social media part of their campaign strategy and Fundly is proud to be a part of this democratic process. Currently we have three presidential hopefuls as clients plus one thousand other political figures petitioning for various offices. Due to our political clientele on both party lines, we are able to accumulate facts and figures pertaining to online fundraising in a way that has not been possible in previous years. As such, we have found that by the end of January 2012 political online fundraising had increased 53 percent as compared to the previous year. Furthermore, we saw that the daily social fundraising volume in January exceeding December’s average volume by more than 350 percent.

“Social fundraising has become a driving force in political fundraising, as candidates ranging from President to town commissioner use social media in unprecedented ways to organize and activate their bases to help generate awareness, money and votes,” said Fundly CEO Dave Boyce.

As cliché as this may sound, the future of fundraising is now. From politicians to nonprofits, from school athletic departments to individuals helping terminal patients, online fundraising has incredible momentum that seems to be increasing with time and success rates.

From government intervention to taxation to health care, we all know that there is a chasm between the views and ideals of Republicans and Democrats. Apparently there are different takes on political fundraising, too.

“The Democrats and Republicans really have opposite problems right now,” said Anthony Corrado, a professor of government at Colby College in an article in thedailybeast.com. “The president has a head start and will out-raise whoever the Republican nominee is, but it’s going to be a financially competitive race because on the other side of the ledger, the super PACS will step in to help erase Obama’s advantage.”

Corrado has strong statistics to support his opinion; Obama has raised about $30 million more than his four Republican competitors combined. However, the Republicans are far in the lead concerning PAC giving with such numbers like Karl Rove’s American Crossroads, which raised $51 million last year and Restore Our Future, the largest of the independent groups supporting Romney which collected more than $30 million last year. “By comparison, supporters gave Priorities USA Action, the main super PAC backing Obama, just over $4 million,” states The Daily Beast reporter Laura Colarusso.

Colarusso explains that the Democrats aren’t tapping into the PAC trend because “in 2008, Obama’s record haul was made possible by the fact that he broke a campaign pledge and opted out of the public financing system. He was the first candidate ever to take that step, and he justified it with the prospect of hostile outside spending. But Democrats haven’t embraced that lesson and have instead rallied against the Citizens United decision that effectively elevated money into a new form of protected political speech. Many supporters of the party have been reluctant so far to contribute to the super PACs the decision effectively empowered.”

On the flip side, Republicans are thriving on this new policy for political fundraising because of anti-Obama sentiment and the fact that individuals can give to independent groups without a donation ceiling. However, many GOP nominees’ numbers from individual supporters are suffering because their party’s funds are divided between candidates while many Democrats widely continue to support President Obama.

“The president still has the advantage,” says Corrado. “The real question is going to be whether conservative small donors will rally behind the eventual nominee to provide the money his campaign will need in a contest against Obama or if he’ll have to rely on the super PACs.”

President Obama always seems to be on the cusp of innovative and new ideas whether it concerns health care, aiding homeowners with their mortgages or addressing unemployment. Regardless if you approve or disapprove of his policies, you have to admit that he always seems to be on the cutting edge. It is obvious that in this race to return to the Oval Office for a second term, he is treading new ground in the realm of online political fundraising.

Like the majority of Americans, the president seems to be glued to his mobile phone. Always with Blackberry in hand, he is constantly abreast of impending news and connected to his various contacts. He is also taking this same approach in his fundraising efforts.

NPR.com reports that the president’s campaign committee, Obama for America, took contributions from more than half a million people in the final three months of 2011 in which 200,000 of them were brand-new donors to his campaign. One reason is due to the immense effort his campaign is focusing on social media fundraising. “You know, they spent a million bucks in the quarter, basically, on technology,” says Clay Johnson, author of The Information Diet: A Case For Conscious Consumption. He says he’s not surprised to see that the Obama campaign spent about as much on Internet ads as it did on postage — more than $2 million.

“Now, the online advertising and the postage, that’s about either getting new people into the campaign or convincing people to donate. But the million dollars in a quarter on technology is about creating infrastructure,” Johnson says.

According to this same article, it appears that this is just the beginning of Obama’s efforts to dominate the online world to gain more donor support. It was reported that his campaign spent close to $400,000 on software and Web hosting, more than $600,000 on computer equipment and more than $43,000 at Apple stores just in a three-month period starting from last October. It is interesting to note that last quarter, Obama also invested $65,000 in text messaging.

In this fast paced world where everyone is connected to the internet, it seems rather obvious that this is the best way for politicians to gain support and financial backing. With the new strategies that are being formed in this election and the innovative devises that are continually being advertised by computer companies, who knows what the 2016 presidential elections will look like?

I am in the silent majority: I am part of a two income family, I have an upside down mortgage and we are putting off buying that new car for yet another year. As I watch the progression of the 2012 presidential election and the financial reports that are being gathered, my mind is blown away at the magnitude of dollars being raised.

As I read articles commenting on President Obama’s $35,000 per ticket fundraisers (yikes, that could buy me a nice new car) to the donations raised for the candidates who have dropped out of the election, it seems there is plenty of money out there for political fundraising.

Midnight on Tuesday marked the filing deadline for campaign reports and here are the current statistics according to USA Today: Barack Obama has currently raised $139,526,311 (which includes contributions from individuals, loans, political action committee (PAC) contributions and other income). 41.9% of his donations are from small contributions under $200. Mitt Romney is in second place with $57,112,767 and 9.2% of that amount has come from small contributions. Ron Paul is next in line with $26,104,721 coming in from donor support (52% from small contributions). Newt Gingrich follows with $12,733,254 raised (49.2% from small contributions) and finally Rick Santorum brings up the rear with $2,184,953 (32.3% from small contributions).It is also interesting to note that the total amount raised for Republican candidates equals almost $157 million which exceeds Obama’s numbers (even if it took nine candidates to do it).

I am really impressed with the percentage of small contributions that make up almost half of many of the candidates’ fundraising bank accounts. With this being the first presidential election fully using the power of social media, I must say that I believe much of this financial support is due to this surge in technology. While the PACs are flexing their financial power, the individual small contributors seem to be holding their own.

Social media fundraising has never been easier, and Fundly is making strides in bridging the gap between casual internet use and donor involvement. Between Facebook posts, live Tweets being shared during debates and the State of the Union Address and ads on the internet, candidates are reaching their supporters en masse and it seems to be paying off.

I think the State of the Union address was pretty much on every basic cable channel last night. With an upcoming election and a low approval rate, did President Obama rally the masses to get one step closer to winning a second term? Will his speech to the nation further his political fundraising efforts?

I can’t help but wonder at the timing of Obama’s dissertation just one day after the Republican debates. It’s obvious that the incumbent usually has the advantage over new nominees, but the back biting and mudslinging of the political party that is trying to offset the reigning elected majority never seems to bode well. While Obama was able to present a polished speech with calm reserve and his usual charisma, his opponents had to battle it out the night before with indignation, flustered comebacks and on the defensive. Does this seem fair? (And is anything “fair” in love, war, and politics?) However, I digress…

As the polarization of the two parties seems to increase, it appeared that Obama’s main strategy to gain support was to appeal to the middle class by addressing the issues concerning taxation of millionaires (a not-so-subtle jab at the recent Mitt Romney controversy) and government involvement to aid homeowners whose mortgages are upside down. These are certainly appealing issues, but will this be the net that gathers more supporters to Obama’s team?

In the Chicago Tribune Peter Hart, Democratic pollster, commented that “Obama knows he has 44% of the electorate” to start with, and in a country as divided as the U.S., “44% is a big number. He’s decided “I’m going to keep those people on board, then we’ll go after everyone else.”

David Lauter of the Washington Bureau writes in the Chicago Tribune that, “Getting the rest of the way to a majority depends on persuading a handful of crucial voters in the middle who find themselves tugged in two directions. On the one hand, voters — including those who call themselves independents — hold a deeply skeptical view of government and its ability to help them. Fewer than one-third of voters have a positive view of the size and power of the federal government.

“At the same time, pollsters have found a sharp and rapid increase in the percentage of people who doubt the Republican idea that America has no class divisions. In 2009, a majority of both Republicans and independents said they saw little if any conflict between rich and poor, according to a survey by the Pew Research Center. Now, more than two-thirds of Americans, including those independent voters, say they think such conflicts are ‘strong’ or ‘very strong.’”

So basically Obama, Romney, Gingrich, Santorum, and Paul all are trying to win the favor of disillusioned voters. Fortunately there is still ten months ahead to turn this tide. Using social media fundraising tools and connecting with their supporters just may be the key to winning the election.

I must say that the longer this presidential campaigning goes on, the more interested I get. I particularly like how in recent weeks the candidates are showing more of their personalities.

From President Obama’s rendition of Rev. Al Green’s “Let’s Stay Together” to Newt Gingrich’s snappy comeback to CNN moderator John King for opening a debate with a question concerning his ex-wife, I certainly like these more human sides of the candidates. Add the recent Republican debates to the mix, and now the election is starting to get really fascinating. Are the political fundraising numbers reflecting all the media attention that these men are garnering?

I have to admit that I’m not a huge fan of the debates. In a battle of wit, words and wisdom, the candidates are rallied on the defensive to cut the other down and rise fairly unscathed. To me it just feels like bumbling rhetoric and back biting. On the other hand, well practiced speeches with teleprompters rarely gives the public a full sense of the value of the candidate either.

I can’t help but think of the first televised debate for the 1960 presidential election between John F. Kenney and Richard Nixon. While I was not even a glimmer in my parents’ eyes, as a history major I was intrigued by this event. The television viewers thought that Kennedy had won the debates due to his fit appearance and charisma while Nixon was recovering from an illness and seemed rather disheveled. The radio listeners thought that Nixon had better formed points and was more knowledgeable.

Interestingly enough, the Great Debates of 1960 also showed that this televised event didn’t change voters’ opinions but only solidified who they supported. 70 million viewers were glued to their screens however only 6% said that they voted based on what they had seen. Does this still seem to be the case?

Possibly. Even with Gingrich’s negative press concerning allegations from his ex-wife, his win in the South Carolina primary made him a serious contender for the Republican nomination.  But don’t count Ron Paul out. Twitter has some statistics up on @mentionmachine that reports that Gingrich has had 286,313 Twitter mentions this week while Paul has 319,394. Does this equal voter support and high fundraising dollars?

Probably not, but just when you think you know what’s going to happen next in this electoral race, you realize that you were wrong.