Recently President Obama reminded everyone from my hometown in Austin that he is pretty good at ‘Politicking’. I am sure we can all guess what he means but the exact definition is “To engage in politics”. Very appropriate phrase. Politicians nationwide are increasingly turning to social media Twitter, Facebook and YouTube to engage their voters and supports. Of course, they all saw the success Obama had in engaging new voters via social media in presidential elections.

Initially many newer generation politicians used it to emphasize transparency in governing.

Matt Silverman has done an excellent post on Mashable detailing the examples.As we get closer to the mid term election, politicians and their respective campaigns have become very savvy at using social media to connect with their supporters and constituents.

It really complement their traditional media campaigns including TV, radio, news papers and direct mail.

In turn the citizens are more involved then ever and vocal about preferences, support and rallies they plan to attend along with friends etc. Even regulators are starting to take notice of social media practices. California Fair Political Practices Commission is already setting the ground rules.

All the news and talk on social media aside, the proof is always in the pudding. We really wanted to see if this citizen participation was really as good as it being made out to be.

We had the perfect tool to find it. Context Mine is a simple, easy to use tool to monitor and manage your brand on social media networks. Califonia governors race seemed to the ideal candidate. On one side you have an experienced politician who has governed the state before and on another you have novice politician but experienced high tech business leader. We could not start with a better example to start with.

Source RealClear Politics - California Governor's Race for 2010

The results were amazing. We could watch and monitor in detail many blogs, facebook pages by the campaigns and all the microblogging messages, promoting various arguments supporting one cause or the other. You could even monitor people requesting their friends to show up at rallies and getting immediate responses from many.

You can check this out in real time here. or click on the picture below. I am sure you will be as impressed by the numbers and what you can slice and dice, including information on influential users and what they are saying.