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Barack Obama did a Reddit Ask Me Anything back in August not just as a gimmick to prove he was "with it," but because that's where his voter base was, an anonymous "official" from Obama's analytics team told Time's Michael Scherer. With 34 million unique visitors visiting the site each month, it makes sense that appealing to the people of that Internet world would be a good way to campaign. But, how powerful is that voter base? And is a Reddit AMA the way to win them over?
While Barack Obama did a Reddit AMA and won the election, that doesn't really prove any connection between the two things. In fact, following his question and answer period, people responded that he hadn't given any real answers to real questions. The Atlantic's Alexis Madrigal wrote, "The Reddit AMA is a terrible format for extracting information from a politician," which angered some Reddit people. But as a glorified campaign stop, maybe Obama's AMA worked?
Many of Reddit's users fall in the "young people" category, which Obama dominated, getting 67 percent of the 18- to 29-year-old vote. These Quantcast numbers don't break down the age groups exactly like that, but more than 30 percent of Reddit's users fall into the 18-34 category. Eliminating those under 18 and therefore ineligible to vote, nearly half of Reddit's voting age users are in that key "young" Obama demographic: