Polls

Xbox Live is a Blue State

November 4, 2008

The official Xbox color may be green, but when it comes to politics, online gaming venue Xbox Live is clearly a blue state.

According to a Microsoft rep, a final pre-election poll taken over the weekend shows Democrat Barack Obama with a commanding lead over Republican John McCain among XBL gamers. Here are those numbers:

  • Obama 53%
  • McCain 33%
  • Undecided 14%

In a late September XBL poll, Obama led 43-31%. The new data seems to suggest that some XBL users who were undecided or who supported other candidates in the earlier poll have largely shifted to Obama.

As Xbox Live project manager Ben Vaught recently pointed out to GamePolitics, with 14 million subscribers, if Xbox Live was a state, it would be the seventh largest in the U.S. with 20 electoral votes.

Gamers Worried About Jobs & Economy, Says New Xbox Live Poll

October 22, 2008

Last month GamePolitics tracked Xbox Live's inaugural use of political polling among its members. In that survey, XBL users overwhelmingly gave the nod to Barack Obama as their choice for president - and that was before anyone knew about those now famous in-game Obama ads.

In partnership with nonprofit Rock the Vote, XBL has just completed a new round of polling. This time users were asked to name which issues were most on their mind.

So what's the answer? In the words of Deomocratic campaign strategist James Carville, it's the economy, stupid. Here are the numbers:

  • 35%        Jobs and the Economy
  • 19%        Environment
  • 18%        Foreign Policy
  • 14%        Health Care
  • 14%        Education
     

At this point it's fair to say that XBL has jumped into the election season with both feet. In addition to user polling and a voter registration drive, the online service is offering election 2008 gamerpics and themes, as well as a music video from The Presidents of the United States of America's new album.

On Monday, GamePolitics spoke to project manager Ben Vaught about the injection of politics into the XBL user experience. Vaught hadn't seen the results of the new poll at that point:

The reason we do these polls is that Xbox Live is more and more becoming a bellwether of where youth voting trends are going… This [new] poll is really a chance for Xbox Live members to tell the presidential candidates... this is why were voting, this is why this election matters to us…

 

I thought [the Obama ads were] amazing. This is a community of over 14 million members. They’re active and engaged, they’re vocal. And it's not just about games and entertainment. They're also active and engaged and feel very stongly about the direction of their country… If Xbox Live was a state, it would be the seventh largest with 20 electoral votes.

[Rock the Vote] is very happy with how everthing is turning out. For Rock the Vote, they’re going to where younger voters are this election and this year they’re on Xbox Live. With Microdoft and Xbox, we know that the presidential election is important and we’re really trying to do our part to encourage turnout and for people to vote.

Obama Favored in Xbox Live Poll

September 23, 2008

A press release touting Xbox Live's partnership with Rock the Vote notes that Barack Obama has a 12% edge over John McCain among participants in an XBL poll. 100,000 users took part, which, according to the press release, makes the XBL sample larger than Gallup, NBC and CNN combined. Of course, as Giant Bomb notes:

...they aren't pretending that it's actual science, because there are so many holes in this poll that it's impossible to take it as anything other than sort-of interesting. For example, as someone who has more than one Xbox Live gold account, I probably could have voted twice...

Still, it is a fascinating use of what started out a few years back as a space designed strictly for online gaming.

As far as the results, Obama's big lead is not especially surprising, given that XBL users likely skew significantly younger than the population as a whole. Here are the numbers:

  • Obama \ Biden:                  43%
  • McCain \ Palin:                    31%
  • Undecided:                         13%
  • Other:                                13%

Of more value than the polling is the impressive level of political engagement engendered by the XBL / Rock the Vote partnership. As the press release points out:
 

In its first two weeks of the program, more than 55,000 voter registration forms were downloaded through Xbox LIVE and xbox.com. Additionally, videos from the recent Democratic and Republican conventions were downloaded nearly 25,000 times.

 

To-date, the Xbox LIVE community has downloaded more than 350,000 pieces of program-specific content, ranging from candidate gamerpics to videos and Rock the Vote logos. That’s nearly five times the amount of people present at Barack Obama’s acceptance speech during the Democratic Convention in Denver.
 

GamePolitics ShoutBox

Posted 11/20/08 at 07:18pm
Shadow D. Darkman: @PHX: Yo.
Posted 11/20/08 at 07:14pm
PHX Corp: hey shadow
Posted 11/20/08 at 07:13pm
Shadow D. Darkman: Hmm...
Posted 11/20/08 at 07:06pm
d.vel.oper: @sql: Ah. How's the performance? Looking for a quantifiable sum, btw.
Posted 11/20/08 at 07:03pm
sqlrob: when it hits the server. The server doesn't know anything happened
Posted 11/20/08 at 07:03pm
sqlrob: @d: The endpoint doesn't see the change. It's compressed (and other optimizations) between client and hardware, then normal
Posted 11/20/08 at 07:01pm
d.vel.oper: @sql: I'm assuming we're talking about more here than just endpoint compression?
Posted 11/20/08 at 06:59pm
sqlrob: ..., needs the proper network backend hardware for most features, but not all
Posted 11/20/08 at 06:59pm
PHX Corp: WTF, Obama Citezinsip questioned again http://foolocracy.com/2008/11/supreme-court-to-review-obamas-citizenship/
Posted 11/20/08 at 06:58pm
sqlrob: @d.vel.oper: I also don't want to spam. It's a WAN accelerator, runs under Windows and accelerates network traffic
Posted 11/20/08 at 06:56pm
d.vel.oper: @sqlrob: What product(s) do you actually work on, if you're not all NDAized, that is.
Posted 11/20/08 at 06:56pm
PHX Corp: If things go well the Republicans may have to go libertaian if all else fails
Posted 11/20/08 at 06:55pm
sqlrob: @d.vel.oper: I was also part of an acquisition, I originally did VPN work
Posted 11/20/08 at 06:55pm
d.vel.oper: Just let them have their guns and their wives/sisters.
Posted 11/20/08 at 06:55pm
d.vel.oper: Sure, it's infuriating, but not threatening. They're obviously no longer the majority.
Posted 11/20/08 at 06:54pm
d.vel.oper: @PHX: These are the same guys that believe fossils were a practical joke played by god.
Posted 11/20/08 at 06:54pm
sqlrob: @d.vel.oper: I don't work on that part of the product. I work on network acceleration
Posted 11/20/08 at 06:54pm
PHX Corp: I compared all comentaters on that site(about Humanevents.com) to Drug addicts and alcholics, not on his blog, here
Posted 11/20/08 at 06:52pm
d.vel.oper: @sqlrob: You like that job? Or just so old you're not an idealist any more?
Posted 11/20/08 at 06:51pm
PHX Corp: some of his commentators declaring tht the goverment has every right to regulate Video games (In thier opinion they are not free Speech)
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