There has been much speculation and analysis from commentators since the end of the primary season about the ability of Senator Obama to secure the support of passionate Clinton supporters.
This has focused on his ability to pick up the votes of blue-collar populations, women and Hispanic community who have made up much of her base within the Democratic Party.
Another constituency which strongly, although not universally, supported Clinton’s bid for the nomination was gays and lesbians. The polls of this demographic speak for themselves and demonstrated a strong and loyal following among this section of the population.
To many, gay and lesbian voters instinctively support Democratic candidates. The polls again consistently confirm this assumption and it was noticeable that the LGBT forum on Logo this year only featured Democrats after every GOP candidate refused an invitation for a similar event.
However signs are that Senator Obama does not underestimate the power of this constituency and the need to overcome some of the divisions within it during the primary season.
It will be fascinating to see how Obama uses communications techniques to reach LGBT voters and specifically target this audience. Of course it is a diverse audience who want to hear all the candidates’ views on a range of issues but there are undoubtedly specific issues that will impact on their voting decisions.
He has always had an LGBT section on his Web site and his mentions of gays and lesbians in his speeches during the campaign have been noted.
Now it looks as if he is beefing up his communications effort to win over Clinton supporters and to gain the support of LGBT voters in the fall.
Last Friday, the Obama campaign hosted a conference call with 1,200 LGBT journalists and activists, many of them Clinton supporters, to begin the healing process.
Obama has now announced that Dave Noble, the Director of Public Policy & Government Affairs for the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, has been appointed as his Director of LGBT Vote. He will work alongside Steve Hildebrand, Obama’s openly gay Deputy Campaign Manager to reach out to this constituency.
From a professional communicator’s perspective, it is interesting to see that Obama has acted so swiftly to shore up support in the LGBT community and signaled that he does not take us for granted.
It will be even more interesting to see how the presumptive Democratic nominee and his new team use innovative communications techniques to connect with gay and lesbian voters. His team has been widely credited with running the first Web 2.0 campaign and for using digital tactics to energize his voting base and bring in new supporters. I will be interested to see how he tailors this outreach to communicate with we often say on this blog is a tech savvy and a switched-on demographic.
Another question will be to see how he, and other political candidates across the country, choose to target gays and lesbians. When he was accused of not doing interviews in certain LGBT magazines before sitting down with the editor of The Advocate, his campaign pointed out the importance of talking about LGBT issues to all audiences and not just in the gay press.
This hints that his campaign will seek to communicate with this audience both in the mainstream and in specialist media outlets. This is what brands seeking to reach a wide spectrum of gays and lesbians should do and it looks as if Obama’s camp understands the need to speak about these issues everywhere and not simply in specialist news LGBT outlets or fundraising events.
The coming months we will see how Obama’s campaign, and others, communicate with the LGBT audience. Firstly their general approach, in terms of whether they simply do a few interviews in the gay press or seek to reach a wider audience who may not read these publications, and secondly the types of campaign techniques (particularly online tactics) that will employed to generate support in this demographic.
SUBSCRIBE
I was at the Texas State Democratic Convention last weekend and it was amazing how many politicans where trying to woo the gay vote. During the Stonewall Democrats caucus, politicos were lined up out the door to get two minutes in front of the large crowd. I kept saying to myself, “Are we still in Texas?!”