Why Bush Won (hint = AdWords)

In the 6 weeks leading up to the last Presidential election, I ran a paid search campaign on Google targeted to the swing states and espousing my particular point of view by driving people conducting politically-themed searches to sites sharing my viewpoints.

4.8M impressions and 45,000 clicks later, Bush won, so AdWords geotargeting works:

Search Total 3,220 clicks / 142,855 impressions / 2.2% CTR / $359.46
Content Total 23,601 clicks/ 4,686,307 impressions / 0.5% CTR / $2,396.66
Winner: Bush
Loser: Kerry

Why more individuals don't pay to promote their own viewpoints is beyond me. What better vehicle to promote your own political agenda than the paid marketplace of ideas? I know, I know, many people are disgusted with the idea of anything other than Google's algorithms determining what results should show up for searches that are political in nature. Not me though, not me. If we took the money raised from individuals/corporations and horribly spent by politicians and their parties on lame TV ads, and gave each citizen a $50 online marketing budget, political advertising would be much more interesting. Not to mention the level of increased involvement in the political process it would foster.

[NOTE: this post is about search marketing and politics, not *my* politics; it just so happens I preferred Bush to Kerry last time around.]