When former Senator Mike Gravel opened his campaign headquarters in Second Life last May he became the first U.S. presidential candidate to officially authorize a presence in world. Despite the fact that the 2008 presidential race is becoming something of a watershed event for the social web, there's no indication that any of the other candidates have an interest in using SL, or any other virtual world, to reach voters. That hasn't stopped the Gravel campaign from expanding its efforts in SL.
Gravel is now taking his SL campaign to a new level, using his virtual headquarters as a launching pad for one of the most important strategic tools in any campaign -- polling. On the surface this may not seem newsworthy -- other political groups are already conducting polls in SL. The difference here is that the Gravel poll in SL represents the official campaign's ONLY polling effort ... anywhere. The Mike Gravel 2008 National Polling Center is located in Second Life.
I stopped by the Gravel headquarters to examine the new polling system and find out what sort of information the campaign hopes to gain from polling residents of a virtual world. In world campaign director Astrophysicist McCallister (also a real-world Gravel campaign staffer) demonstrated the new system for me, and answered questions about its strategic value.
The system is fairly rudimentary at this point. Residents are asked to choose a candidate from a list of Republicans and Democrats, indicate why they chose the candidate, and indicate what state they're from. The state information will be used to segment responses and filter out non-US residents.
To call this a minimalist approach to polling would be an understatement. However, I'm told that in the future the system will be expanded to gather more data.
I asked McCallister what sort of information the campaign hoped to gain from polling residents of a virtual world -- after all, a survey of this sort gathers almost no meaningful demographic data about respondents. It's hardly a scientific approach to polling.
McCallister indicated the system will allow the campaign to "generalize data of Second Life residents. The goal in mind, however, is to gauge Second Life residents living in, and hopefully registered to vote in, the United States". Given the relatively small number of U.S. residents active in Second Life I expect the poll will produce what statisticians might refer to as a "small sample size". Still, McCallister tells me that the the real world campaign will process and use the data in some manner, "the intent and purpose is almost singularly RL. The National campaign is taking the data, after we process it, and analyzing it mostly as they would any other poll".
Of course, this whole approach comes down to money -- or rather, a lack of money. The political process, in the U.S. at least, is driven entirely by money. While new media provides candidates with low cost exposure to a national audience, professional polling is still expensive. Gravel is apparently intent on exploring other options, no matter how unconventional they may seem.
This whole approach to polling makes more sense when you consider the candidate. Other campaigns (the ones that can afford more scientific polls) frequently use polling data to determine what issues their candidate should be talking about, and even what opinions their candidate should have on certain issues. Gravel isn't that sort of candidate. He already knows what his issues are, and it's unlikely that poll results are going to sway him or have an impact on his stump speeches.
McCallister does concede that the SL poll is just a first step and that the campaign will likely expand its efforts to include other avenues -- most likely the web. But for now, the campaign is focusing on gathering data in Second Life.
