The way that politicians communicate their platforms to voters has dramatically changed since the days when the U.S. first formed its democracy. Sure, some of the fundamental principles are the same, but the way candidates inform their public on what they pledge to do if elected to office and their plan of execution is vastly different from the days of yore when all candidates had to convey their messages were strong voices, soapboxes and town meeting halls.

Perhaps the most dramatic and influential change on how politicians communicated their ideas to voters took place in the early 1950s when television became an outlet for politicians to convey their campaign promises to the public. Historians cite the presidential race between Dwight D. Eisenhower and Adlai Stevenson as the first election in which both parties used TV as a means of communicating their campaign messages. Since then, the television has been and remains one of the main outlets used to convey campaign promises.
And while TV viewers and voters alike are regaled with politically-focused commercials from August to Election Day, the Internet is quickly picking up momentum as a cost-effective and efficient way of sharing campaign messages with the general public.

Although the Internet’s role in political campaigns can be traced back to 2004 when Howard Dean’s staff used the Internet as a place to raise campaign funds, its usefulness proved invaluable to Barack Obama’s campaign in 2007, where the Internet was used as a recruiting tool, a meeting place and an advertising medium. Granted, the Internet had undergone some significant changes since Dean’s day, thanks to the popularity of social networking sites, which Obama’s staff leveraged to the fullest to gain voter support quickly and cost effectively.
Many credit the staff’s use of the Internet as to why and how Obama was quickly and nimbly able to gain voter support and clench the victory as U.S. president. Why historians will certainly debate this in the years to come, what’s certain is that Obama’s staff’s use of the Internet forever changed the way candidate’s will campaign from here on out.