The first election in which each media was used for campaigning

[buritobr]

Radio: 1928? 1932? 1936?

TV: 1952

Internet: 1996?

[buritobr]

In the late 1990s, we used the Internet for websites and email. Website was nothing much more than reading a newspaper of a leaflet in a computer screen. Did not change the way of making political campaign. There were discussion foruns and chat rooms, but nothing much more than this.

In the 1990s, people used the Internet only to receive information. In the 2000s, it became possible to receive and send information.

In the early and mid 2000s, there was the golden age of the Blogs. In the late 2000s, people who used to write Blogs started using only Twitter and Facebook. They became lazy to write longer texts.

[buritobr]

Why didn't the liberals use the Internet in the 1990s?

[buritobr]

The first time radio was used to show the results took place in the 1920s, but in 1916, even in a close election, the winner was known on Wednesday morning. It is famous the story in which Hughes went to bed thinking that he was winner and when he woke up, he knew that he lost. This is amazing, considering how big is the US territory and the scarcity of technologies of that time: only telephone and telegraph.
However, even after big technological progress, the time needed to process the results did not reduce too much. In 1960, the election was called to Kennedy on Wednesday morning. In 1968, the election was called to Nixon on Wednesday morning. In 1976, the election was called to Carter on 3:30am in the Eastern time zone. In 2012, the election was called to Obama on 11:20pm in the Eastern time zone.

In Brazil, by constrast, which has a territory with the same size and almost the same number of voters, the time needed to process the votes reduced a lot in the last 20 years. In 1994, the last election before the introduction of the electronic vote (the last election in which all the country used paper ballots), it took six days to process 100% of the ballots (more time than in the USA in 1916!). The winner was known in the election night only because the exit polls predicted the landslide for Fernando Henrique Cardoso. In 2014, 95% of the votes had already been processed on 8pm, three hours after the polls had been closed in the first time zone and when the polls in the last time zone were closed. The media was allowed to publish the results only that time because no result can be published in Brazil while there are people still voting. The election was called to Dilma Rousseff at 8:15pm.