If there is one thing that most politicians are good at, it’s showing up places.
In the political world, I’ve never met a candidate not completely hell bent on attending as many dinners, parades, coffee’s, fundraisers, club meetings – you name it – as humanly possible.
And for good reason.
Candidates know most voters won’t have the chance to meet the opposition. And they know voters are more likely to vote for the candidate they did meet, even if the meeting was brief. (as long as it was a positive encounter)
And so it goes, candidates will jam their schedules each day with every kind of community event, even absurdly small ones, if it means meeting a few more potential voters here and there. Gas prices and other costs are rarely considered.
I am always amazed by how willing campaigns are to attend the smallest of gatherings or worse, poorly organized events hosted by the politically influential. I’ve sat through more candidate forums that were supposedly public, but attended only by the organizer and the campaigns.
Waste of time? For sure. But anything to appease the locals.
So we here at VoteGTR got to thinking. For all this time on the road, why not get something in return?
Can a tool like Google Maps 1) illustrate the campaign trail and 2) use the event IDs to enhance local search engine page rankings.
What we learned was pretty cool. Check back with us next week for part two.
Sean Murphy is the CEO and Founder of VOTEGTR, a digital media service that provides websites and digital advertising to political candidates, political action committees, and ballot initiatives in the United States.
