Obama Rallies the YouTube Vote

The Obama campaign is intensifying its YouTube outreach in the closing days of the election, stacking its official channel with as many as 10 new, high-quality videos a day.

Some spots are short, upbeat videos aiming for mass appeal. This week’s viral hit, “Make History,” for example, broke into YouTube’s top 10 this week. With peppy instrumentals by Velvetron, the spot shows people headed off to vote. Sen. Barack Obama only makes a brief cameo, in a drawing on a post-it note.

On Thursday night, the campaign released a video also aiming for a national audience, Choices, that dramatically reprises memorable lines from Obama’s speeches through the entire campaign.

Other recent videos, however, are locally targeted. One particularly dry segment this week features a monotone briefing by N.C. state director Marc Farinella, detailing surprising progress in the state and appealing for more volunteers next week.

Local or national, most of these videos are aimed squarely at Obama supporters, not those last undecideds that Obama targeted with his paid infomercial. To that end, the campaign has focused on its supporters and volunteers — communing, connecting and inspiring through any medium available.

It looks like it’s paying off. In a new interview with Time magazine, Obama strategist David Axelrod stands by the campaign’s goal of deploying eight million volunteers on Election Day, which would be a record-breaking show of force.

This YouTube push is one more way for the Obama campaign to reach every last volunteer as the clock runs out.