Though many of Reddit's users are male, a demographic Romney won, Obama also attracted people who attained at least their college degrees, another group of people who regularly use "the front page of the Internet":

Just because the two demographics (Reddit and Obama) align, however, doesn't mean the Reddit AMA did it. Obama wasn't the only presidential candidate who did one—Green Party candidate Jill Stein and Libertarian ticket Gary Johnson also did AMAs—but, obviously, neither of them won. Then again, neither of them had very high chances of winning to start. A handful of congressional candidates, however, also did Reddit AMA's. How did they fare? Politico's Alex Byers says not that well.

As expected, none of the approx 15 congressional challengers who did a Reddit AMA this cycle won last night. — Alex Byers (@byersalex) November 7, 2012

The following congressional candidates did AMAs, and while the incumbents won, the challengers did not.

A handful of people who did AMAs didn't make it through the primaries, either. Now a lot of these elections weren't even close enough for a Reddit AMA to matter. But the close ones, like Graves who narrowly lost to Bachmann, didn't get enough of a Reddit boost to win.

As Byers wrote last month, the power of a Reddit campaign stop depends on the candidate and how they use it. "Harnessing an emerging technology or platform is now standard campaign practice. But picking one that isn’t suited to a particular type of campaign won’t give the contender a boost," he wrote. "I don’t think this is a starter to help you raise your profile to national; I think you have to already have interest to have this be successful," Scott Goodstein, a former Obama campaign digital strategist told him. It's still not clear that Obama's Reddit campaigning motivated any crucial voters. But for him, we'll say this: It didn't hurt.

This article is from the archive of our partner The Wire.

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