Since the election, the link to this NY Times Electoral Shifts graphic is what I am sharing most with my friends and colleagues.
It’s a great use of informations graphics to tell the story of how the votes shifted between the 2004 election and the 2008 election.
Almost everyone has an opinion, theory or hunch on how Obama won: The economy sucks. People want change. Grassroots effort. Small donations adding up. Getting youth involved in the campaign and voting, along with other previously so-called “marginal” populations: people of color and single women. Interesting.
From my perspective as a design and marketing geek who primarily focuses on Internet Marketing, I vote for the power of social media (blogs, podcasts, video and photo sharing, wiki’s and online communities) as a huge factor in Obama’s win. And also, I think he had a better logo, but that’s another story.
Social media is the grassroots: powered by a high-speed Internet connection, passionate niche audiences finding their tribe, along with caffeine or other beverage of choice.
Young people (those under 30) essentially grew up using social media tools, starting with email and chat rooms, then Facebook and MySpace. And these are folks with enough time on their hands (like us single women) to quickly form communities (and opinions) and organize around them.
Election night found me working late on deadline. Not an atypical scenario here at the Hive. But thanks to the power of streaming news delivered to my desktop by the nanosecond, I didn’t really get around to the project in question until 10 pm PST (outcome: client is happy).
You see: From about 3pm, when early election results were being reported from the East Coast, until after Obama’s Grant Park celebration speech, I was totally distracted by all of the options for enjoying this historic day. Actually, I started checking the news around noon, and found it hard to concentrate on anyting else.
I don’t have a TV. I get all of my news via the Internet, radio, and what my friends tell me. So I’m used to relying on the Internet as my media channel.
Because The New York Times has such compelling information graphics (fodder for all design geeks), I started my search for election coverage on their website.
If you are wondering how The New York Times jives with Citizen Media....
For pure entertainment value, (and shameless use of Helvetica) this sidebar item grabbed by attention.
From a drop-down list of possible emotions, you can input—once per hour—what you are feeling about the election (well...they don’t actually use the word feeling here, they say “current state of mind”) along with your candidate of choice. The results flow across the screen, changing by the second as folks add their imput.
Citizens contributed to and shaped the news in other ways:
Comments on columnists blog posts and articles were shown with links into the content. Lot’s of great rabbit trails there.
I even clicked on some of the banner ads. Because they were well-designed. 
Gap’s election day banner ads led visitors to play with cleverly-designed vote buttons. Some of which you can purchase, of course.
Since I don’t have TV, I have to see what Oprah’s up to online. Again, more interactive media encouraging visitors to participate in the electoral process.
Readers were also encouraged to send in their election day photos, posted to the New York Times website. This is something that Design for Democracy has been advocating for several elections.
This handy desktop widget kept me informed...ahead of television coverage, which I found out when I took a breather and walked over to my local pub to celebrate with my community.
State of mind images: Obama supporters, 1PM PST 
The networks waited until polls closed on the West Coast to call Obama as the winner. Slate.com and several other online outlets called the winner much earlier. 
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