Facebook launches social voting app

{mosads}“Former Speaker of the House Tip O’ Neill used to say that all politics is local. Today all politics is social — and the 2012 campaign is shaping up to be most social in history,” Facebook’s Politics & Government team wrote in a blog post.

Clicking “I’m voting!” on the application then asks users to share whom they plan to vote for, asking, “What’s your political leaning?” The app offers three options: Republican, Democrat and Independent. Users can choose whether to post their answer to their Facebook timeline, which would share the information with friends depending on user-set privacy controls.

On Wednesday, more Democrats had publicly answered the question than Republicans or independents, with just over 650 answering so far.

The application then goes through several other questions similar to those on a traditional poll, such as “Which issue matters most to you?” (Answers: Economy, healthcare or “other.”) Other questions refer to current policy debates including tax cuts, Iran, gay marriage, state versus federal authority on immigration and the national debt.

Another question refers to President Obama’s demands that Mitt Romney release more of his personal tax returns, asking, “Should the public be able to see all of a candidate’s previous tax returns?”

Facebook announced the planned application as well as the association with CNN back in July. Facebook and CNN are partnering to mine data shared by the Facebook user base for analysis that will be shared on CNN, CNN.com and on the U.S. Politics on Facebook page, Facebook’s hub for campaign 2012 information.