CHARLOTTE, N.C. — President Obama’s campaign will turn to technology to drum up voters at the convention. The campaign will stream the entire event online, incorporate voter comments into the feed, and have convention attendees interact electronically with those watching on the Internet and mobile devices.
Seeking to recapture the advantage President Obama’s insurgent grassroots campaign held in 2008, when the campaign set new standards for using technology in politics, his team will engage sophisticated technology to gather data on voters that can be used for registration drives and get out the vote efforts.
The convention will be streamed online simultaneously in Spanish to help solidify President Obama’s appreciable advantage over Republican rival Mitt Romney with Hispanics voters.
The move to online streaming comes as television networks cut back on their convention coverage. TV viewership was down during last week’s Republican convention; about 30 million people watched Romney’s acceptance speech, compared to 40 million who saw Sen. John McCain accept the GOP nomination in 2008.
Starting Tuesday, a parade of high-profile speakers will stand on a blue-carpeted stage in Charlotte’s Time Warner Cable Arena to vouch for Obama’s economic agenda, which his team says is focused on the middle class: ending tax cuts for the rich and reducing the debt, while spending more on education, energy and infrastructure.
Several voters – called “American Heroes” by Obama’s team – also will speak at and appear in videos at the convention, putting a human face on Obama’s program.
The Democratic National Convention starts less than a week after Republicans gathered in Tampa, Fla., to nominate Romney as the party’s presidential candidate. Democrats hope that by holding their convention second, Obama can emerge with momentum on his side as the race for the White House bounds into its final stretch.