By: Whitney McFerron - Medill News Service

Gasp! The Democrats and the Republicans are working together.

But only because they have YouTube as a mediator.

The video sharing Web site-turned-referee has helped the two parties put together a joint contest ahead of their national conventions, asking users to submit two-minute clips explaining why they’ll support either the Democrats or the Republicans in this year’s election. A winner of each political affiliation will get a free trip to that party’s convention-Aug. 25 to 28 for the Democrats, Sept. 1 to 4 for the Republicans. Friday is the last day to submit a video.

YouTube is full of hokey contests. What’s so interesting about this one?

Both parties have posted videos introducing the contest on their YouTube channels. The fun part is that these videos are strikingly similar-right down to the spacey background music and almost identically worded speeches given by the Democratic and Republican party chairmen, Howard Dean and Mike Duncan. Both videos showcase their convention cities-Denver for Democrats, Minneapolis for Republicans-using the same Google Earth-inspired digital effects (which makes sense because Google owns YouTube).

The parties’ YouTube channels also use the same basic layout to present the contest, so that only the color scheme is different-red for Republicans, blue for Democrats.

For two parties with so little in common politically, this kind of highly orchestrated bipartisanship, however laughable, is at the very least a bit of a surprise. Who knew YouTube could be so great at playing parent, putting a stop to at least some of the backseat sibling noogying along the indefatigable road to the election?

“It was definitely a process that involved making sure that both sides of the aisle were content and comfortable, but I think YouTube was an honest broker in that situation,” said Steve Grove, head of news and politics for YouTube. “We took the lead on design of this thing just from a coordinating perspective, but of course each party ultimately determined what things would look like.”

Grove, as well as spokespeople from both parties, wouldn’t say whose idea the contest was, so it’s hard to tell which party was the cool kid on the playground and which one was the lame-wad who showed up a week later with the matching Hannah Montana backpack. The videos were uploaded on the same day, July 9.

But Joanna Burgos, press secretary for the GOP convention, did point out that the Republicans had another YouTube video contest earlier this summer that was “our idea.” The first video competition, called the “American Neighbor” contest, asked users to submit videos highlighting selfless acts of friends or family members. That contest also featured a free trip to the Republican convention as a prize.

What about the contest within the contest? Which political party has had the best response so far?

Both the Democrats and Republicans are keeping mum on the number of YouTube contest entries they’ve received so far. But as of Thursday afternoon, the Republicans’ video announcing the contest had been watched almost 267,000 times compared with the Democrats’ video, which had been watched about 195,000 times. The RNC’s YouTube channel has about 40 percent more subscribers than the DNC’s.

Damon Jones, Democratic convention spokesman, cautioned against reading too much into his party’s contest video hits.

“If you look at what has happened this year between Sen. (John) McCain and Sen. (Barack) Obama, the Democrats have shown that we can effectively use the Internet as a tool,” Jones said.

Grove said that it’s been up to each party, not YouTube, to promote their own videos. But since the contest launched, YouTube’s official politics blog, CitizenTube.com, has featured three “Why I’m a Republican” video entries, and no corresponding videos for the Democrats.

Jones and the GOP’s Burgos both said their parties had official partnerships with Google and YouTube for the conventions. And each said their party is getting a fair shake.

“The day that we announced it, (YouTube) had our video right next to the Democrats’ video on their home page,” Burgos said. “They did not promote one over the other.”

Copyright © 2008 Capitol News Company, LLC | Distributed by Noofangle Media