UW Election Eye 2012 Campaign 2012 through the eyes of UW faculty and students Nevada GOP’s fail whale: A warning to all political organizations
Storify is a software that enables a media-rich method of synthesizing and telling of a story. We employ it here to document and interpret key moments in the Nevada Republican Party's decision to use -- and trumpet -- technologies such as Google and Twitter to digitally publicize caucus results.
- Jan 27: NV GOP announces they will use technologies from Twitter and Google to report caucus results. They mince no words in letting the world know:
- Feb 4 - AM: Caucus day begins in Nevada. People gather at caucuses, and leaders at 1800 precincts across Nevada tally results of the votes. It all begins with handmarked ballots:
- 4 PM: Nevada GOP set up a "War Room" at the Venetian Hotel & Casino to monitor and oversee the process. Representatives from Google and Twitter awaited results from caucuses across the state, preparing to distribute the outcomes via their platforms. Here's a picture of the calm before the storm:
- 5:10 PM: All good at this point. Official results began streaming in. Here's the first caucus result -- 0.2% of results -- on google maps.
- 6:30 PM: The pace of results started to get notice. Nate Silver, election guru for the NYTimes 538 blog, offers his view:
- 8 PM: Mitt Romney's campaign has no plans to wait for official results. They proclaim a win in Nevada while almost all of the votes are still being counted:
- 9 PM - Part of the reason for the delay was inadequate collection procedures. There was a controversial late caucus for voters who were precluded by religious reasons from caucusing earlier in the day. The votes from this caucus drew national attention. Here is the collection method:
- 9:30 PM: CNN went live with the vote counting there while still headlining that Romney had won:
- 10 PM: Some press were gathered in the media filing center at the Venetian. By this time, some had become impatient with the pace of official reporting. Here, TV reporters pass time:
- 10:15 PM: Nevada's top political journalist is Jon Ralston. He tweeted all night long. Here he captured the frustrations at the vote counting facility:
- 11:20 PM: Karoun Demirjian from the Las Vegas Sun began using the hashtag "things faster than NV GOP" which quickly spread by several Las Vegas reporters:
- 4:48 AM: NV GOP decided to call it a night and sent out their last results on Twitter, with 56% of the votes counted:
