Internet Is More Than Info Tool For VotersInternet Is More Than Info Tool For Voters

Americans are turning to the Internet for guidance as this year's presidential election heads toward the homestretch. Yet beyond providing President George W. Bush and Sen. John Kerry's campaigns with an extensive medium for presenting their platforms, the Internet also has become a deep well for campaign funding and partisan influence.

Web surfers in the 17 states that could vote either Democratic or Republican in the upcoming presidential election, also known as "battleground" or "swing" states, are up to twice as likely to visit at least one of the candidate's election sites, says a report issued Wednesday by Hitwise Pty. Ltd., an Australian company that tracks and publishes online activity.

In Oregon, surfers are more than twice as likely to visit Johnkerry.com than the general Internet user population. In Wisconsin, they're 97% more likely to visit Kerry's site. Surfers in Maine were least likely of those in battleground states to visit Kerry's site.

In Arkansas and Ohio, surfers are twice as likely to visit Georgewbush.com than the general Internet use population. Surfers in Maine also were least likely to visit Bush's site.

Hitwise also reports that Americans' favorite political Web site is Jibjab.com, a site that pokes fun at both candidates. Jibjab.com has gotten 10 million hits, more than Bush and Kerry's campaign sites combined, says Carol Darr, director of George Washington University's Institute for Politics, Democracy & the Internet. "Humor works," she adds. "People were feeling so disengaged from politics, that their $100 contribution did matter." Jibjab.com's success also indicates to Darr that people respond best to sites that are "bipartisanly mean."

Beyond the Internet's ability to amuse and inform is the medium's ability to solicit campaign contributions from even casual political observers. These campaign donations may be small, but they add up. "The Internet is changing the money, and when you change the money, you change everything," Darr says.

During the last presidential campaign in 2000, small-money donations accounted for less than 16% of the funding that Bush and Vice President Al Gore received, Darr says. "Big money had to say grace over [candidates] before the January primaries, or you couldn't raise enough money," she says.

The Internet is encouraging more people to contribute to the candidates' campaigns, each of which has at least 1 million individual donors, Darr says. In 2000, Bush's campaign listed 191,000 individual donors, while Gore's campaign had 150,000. "Diversity of campaigns is important," she says. "Big money had increasingly been funding campaigns and determining who the candidates were."

This trend, which demonstrated how electoral politics was increasingly being influenced by big-money donors, is being corrected this time around. Former presidential candidate Howard Dean may have led the way early on, but Kerry and Bush are now reaping the benefits. "The Kerry campaign says it's raised $75 million online in small-money contributions," Darr says. "This is more than the total that Gore raised in 2000." President Bush is using the Internet to a lesser extent to attract small-money contributions and more as a tool for organizing his campaign, she says.

Section 527 organizations, defined by the Internal Revenue Service as those created to receive and disburse funds to influence or attempt to influence the nomination, election, appointment, or defeat of candidates for public office, are playing a "crucial" role in this year's election, Hitwise reports.

Darr agrees, adding that surfers are best served by consulting multiple sources for their information. The credibility of highly partisan sites is a danger, she says, but this can be corrected by spending enough time online.