Obamas kampagne brugte i høj grad de nye medier til at kommunikere direkte med vælgerne, men gav også vælgerne mulighed for at overbevise deres venner ved at dele materiale på nettet. Nettet og deling er blevet en væsentlig faktor for valgkampe til at ovebevise vælgere.

Democracy Corps (Carville & Greenberg) dokumenterer at Barack Obamas kampagne var mest effektiv til at nå vælgere - både i de gamle medier og nye - The Extraordinary Campaign:

 The reach through society with conventional campaign techniques joined with on-line social networking to produce real face-to-face engagement is perhaps the real revolution this year. Obama’s biggest advantage after television came on being “contacted by a friend, neighbor or coworker” on behalf of the candidate. Over a quarter of all voters and 41 percent of those who voted for Obama were engaged in that way – three times the number contacted for McCain within their social network. This gave Obama an 18-point advantage on social networking communication.

By nearly two to one voters were contacted by the Obama campaign more than the McCain campaign through new forms of communication. Nearly three in ten voters (29 percent) reported that they had watched a campaign commercial online or visited a campaign-sponsored website from the Obama campaign while only one in ten did for McCain. A quarter of voters said they had received emails from the Obama campaign while just 14 percent said the same about the McCain campaign. Similarly, 14 percent of voters reported that they had received campaign or candidate information through their cell phone or PDA from the Obama campaign while just 5 percent said the same from the McCain campaign.

Den social delings-tjeneste ShareThis viser, at meget af kontakteten skete fra ven til ven, og ikke kun fra kamagne til vælger - vælgerne brugte deres sociale netværk til at overbevise deres venner om Obama. Obama Dominates Content Sharing as Election Approaches:

58% of stories shared using ShareThis are about the Senator from Illinois, compared to just 12% for the Senator from Arizona.

That said, combining the amount of sharing currently taking place of each candidate and their VP choice, and you arrive at percentages that aren’t too different than what we’re seeing in the national political polls: data over the past week has Obama/Biden receiving around 50-60% of the sharing, with McCain Palin at 40-50%.