The Digital Divide, Barack Obama holds a distinct advantage over Mitt Romney

Last week, the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism unveiled a study that claimed, "Barack Obama holds a distinct advantage over Mitt Romney in the way his campaign is using digital technology to communicate directly with voters." The study pointed to volume and frequency of tweets, YouTube videos, and site blog posts along with Facebook likes to support its arguable conclusion.

The report and media coverage of it bolstered the perception that Democrats do digital better than Republicans, but the reality is much more nuanced than that. The volume of Obama's digital and social media efforts, coupled with the campaign's big digital ad spending lead show the Democrats are simply doing more digital marketing. While the Romney camp seems to be allocating a smaller portion of the budget to digital, signs indicate that a sophisticated, data-driven approach is in place. Simply put, the Republicans may be focusing their efforts primarily on key voter segments in battleground states rather than spreading their digital ads around elsewhere.