The world is driven by mobile devices, the internet and social networking sites, and these factors aren’t escaping the eyes of presidential candidates – they’re using it to their advantage.  And as election day draws nearer and nearer, it’s on November 6th in case you were wondering, politicians are milking every drop they can out of those three factors.

Donate via text

The latest of these exploits is President Barack Obama’s electoral team’s decision to start accepting campaign donations via text messages.  The move will open the door to small donors who want to help the reelection campaign of President Obama.

The Obama reelection team is just on its final stages of ironing out a deal with Verizon Wireless, Sprint Nextel Corp, U.S. Cellular and T-Mobile USA.  Agreements with AT&T and Verizon are expected to follow soon.  So in the coming days, at Obama rallies don’t be surprised to see “to contribute $10 to Obama for America, text GIVE to OBAMA (62262 )” on video screens.

Obama’s campaign team isn’t the only one to start accepting donations via text.  Rival Mitt Romney also stated that their supporters can soon start donating to “GOMITT” (466488).

Text donations can be made anonymously but has a minimum amount of $10 per text, only $50 per month and a total of $200 for one candidate or campaign.  Also, foreigners, people under 18 or corporations, which could also mean corporate phone accounts, are prohibited from making text donations.

We all know that Obama’s tech savvy when it comes to gaining popularity across social media, but Republican candidate Romney also shocked the nation when his campaign team released an iOS and Android app for the announcement of his VP.

Speaking of smartphones, a recent poll conducted stated that there’s a huge chance smartphone owners will be voting for Obama this coming election.  According to the survey conducted by  Harris Interactive on behalf of Velti, of the nearly 800 iPhone and Android smartphone owners surveyed, 49 percent stated that they would vote in favor of Obama if the presidential election was held today, while 31 percent would support Romney.  But traditional voters, regardless of the smartphone brand they own, will likely be vying for Romney.

If Obama and Romney are to dominate the mobile sector, others are doing it via media outlets and social networking sites.

Social butterfly

Paul Ryan, Romney’s vice presidential candidate, is capturing millions of hearts on YouTube and Facebook.  Since Romney’s announcement of his team-up with Ryan, his YouTube page saw a 300 percent increase in subscriptions.  And just a week after that, the page shows a 250 percent increase in subscribers.  One of Romney’s most popular videos is “America’s Comeback Team” which features Ryan’s acceptance speech with clips of the real state of America.  Just a couple of weeks after the video was posted, it garnered over 1.1 million views.  Also,  Ryan’s VP Facebook page already has more than 1.4 million likes, raked up just 12 days after it was created.