People want to be better informed when the polling places open on November 4th. No longer content to be fed bits from TV news reports and campaign ads, voters looked to the Net to learn about the frontrunners, keep in touch with campaigns, and even donate funds.

A new report from Pew Internet said 46 percent of Americans used their web browsers, mobiles, and inboxes to gather information from the candidates. John McCain, Barack Obama, and other aspirants to the White House were only too happy to oblige, posting news and views on issues regularly.

In the McCain vs. Obama matchup coming in five months, Pew Internet said Obama has some edges over his Republican rival when it comes to the Internet:

• 74% of wired Obama supporters have gotten political news and information online, compared with 57% of online Clinton supporters.

• In a head-to-head matchup with internet users who support Republican McCain, Obama’s backers are more likely to get political news and information online (65% vs. 56%).
• Obama supporters outpace both Clinton and McCain supporters in their usage of online video, social networking sites and other online campaign activities.

Youth is being served on the Democratic and Obama side of the Internet issue. Pew found 14 percent of US Internet users having set up something on Facebook or MySpace of political interest. Half of the Internet users from 18-29 on such sites use them to gain campaign details.

Video watching occupied 35 percent of all Americans who tuned in to a candidate’s message. The real test comes in November, especially among younger voters; will they turn out in significant numbers and convert their online interest to real world votes on November 4th?

Through the use of real-time data firm Wise Window’s software as a service for qualitative data, Stanford constructed a tracking tool for the 2008 Presidential election.

As the Democratic primary continues to grind across the country (we get our shot at voting next Tuesday), more news items emerge about its two candidates, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, as well as the Republican candidate,John McCain.

Stanford built its tracker to express the opinions surrounding candidates in a visually-friendly way. One may visit the Bubble Tracker and see how positive or negative recent commentary appeared about the candidate.

Green bubbles mean good comments, while purple ones reflect bad ones. Visitors to the Stanford site make click on one of the bubbles to see a link to the story driving that opinion.

Viewing past opinions and the bubbles they made may be done through the use of a slider control below the bubble window. Each change with the slider alters the bubbles for each candidate.

And when you pass the mouse pointer over the candidate’s window, the bubbles begin to circulate. So cool! Links we observed hit news stories appearing on Topix and Diggin our unscientific look at Stanford’s bubbles.

Hillary’s picked up over $18 million in New York. Mitt palmed $4.6 million in Utah. Barack is big in California, but not as big as Hillary.

Campaign contributions serve as the fuel that powers the campaign. Resource Shelf pointed out the new FEC maps that show campaign finance information for the Presidential runners, and for House and Senate races.

Data for the Presidential campaigns through September 30th, 2007, presented on maps of the US, appears as circles of various sizes. The bigger the circle, the more that state contributed.

People may look at contributions per state by candidate, party, or overall donations. The individual profiles of candidates provides the most interesting picture. Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Mitt Romney, and Rudy Giuliani had the highest totals in millions through the September 30th date.

California and New York have been home to the most generous donors. Campaign contributions totaling $51.2 million from California, and $48.8 million from New York, flowed to the coffers of various candidates.

Some basic search functionality makes the FEC Presidential map interesting for followers of the search industry. By checking employer data, we found Google’s Marissa Mayer gave $2300 to Obama; ex-Yahoo CEO Terry Semel gave Clinton and Obama $2300 each; and a certain William Gates contributed $2300 to Obama’s campaign (Gates listed his Foundation as his employer, instead of Microsoft).

The idea of the Internet being the great equalizer for grass roots efforts taking on established, powerful entities appeals to people with a broad range of interests. We have seen the non-stop buzz for Paul’s campaign as the latest evidence of this.

According to analytics firm Compete, Paul supporters have demonstrated how effective online tools can be in assisting in organizing events and fundraising.

Compete’s Matt Pace said the campaign’s use of Meetup.com offered a "case study" on turning online activism into offline action. Paul’s 82,000+ Meetup members held nearly 21,000 events to build support and raise funds for him.

Compete measures a metric they call Candidate FaceTime to determine how much time a candidate receives in front of people online. It looks at the total hours voters spend with a candidate on the Internet each month.

As might be expected, Paul tops the list, as people spent over 252,000 hours with him in November 2007. Another Republican candidate, Mike Huckabee, surged to second place after a viral video featuring him and Chuck Norris grabbed over 1.2 million views since its debut.

"Huckabee is the only candidate, other than Paul, whose supporters are making heavy use of Meetup.com to rally support," said Pace.

CNN’s Election 2008 poll shows Huckabee’s offline momentum matching his online fame. He ranked behind only Rudy Giuliani in CNN’s latest poll. Paul rated sixth among Republican nominees.

Metrics from Yahoo Buzz became part of the political dashboard Yahoo opened.

Yahoo News general manager Alan Warms said on Yodal Anecdotal, "This is the first time search data has been presented alongside traditional campaign metrics."

Along with the trends in Yahoo Buzz, the political dashboard features the trends in polls for the candidates (Hillary Clinton and Rudy Giuliani lead the two parties). Money raised by each has a place in another column.

Warms also noted the addition of prediction market stats. These come from Irish-based Intrade, where users try to make money by buying and selling their predictions about major events, including the race for the US Presidency.

We found the Intrade inclusion amusing, as if it accepted real money from US citizens, the full force of the law would hammer those predictors for violating onerous American online gambling laws. The data does provide an interesting snapshot of how some non-US citizens feel about the election, to the point of betting on it.

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We have fun playing with Compete and its ability to present snapshots of web traffic data that can be compared with each other. Since Doug Caverly looked at Democrats and Google Trends, I thought I’d check out the elephant side of the political circus.

The web traffic for Giuliani, Thompson, and Romney doesn’t look very exciting. Each of the trio tops 108,000 visitors by a small margin for November 2007. Thompson enjoyed a spike upon announcing his candidacy, but has since settled into the pack of web interest.

One might guess John McCain’s traffic would reflect a dropoff in interest as he has suffered from woeful fundraising and the need to make some cutbacks in his campaigning. One would guess correctly, as his visits in November hovered around 92,000.

Add up the monthly traffic for that foursome, and about 420,000 people have expressed interest in their campaigns. Then we have some fun and toss Ron Paul into the mix.

Paul’s site drew over 496,000 in November. His site traffic began to rise from June through September. After that, I’m surprised a Game Over sign didn’t light up on the other candidates’ sites, as about 350,000 visitors arrived at Paul’s site in October, on the way to November’s figure.

How that translates to the real world won’t even be hinted at until the primary season begins in 2008. The Republican machine could be astonished if Paul’s web interest converts into votes, but considering how McCain once challenged George W. Bush before being knocked back, Paul’s campaign may end up being noteworthy for its dynamic online activity.

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CNN will begin airing the YouTube Debate this evening, with questions coming from people submitting them on video via Google

On the Digg the Candidates election site, many of the candidates have agreed to participate on the site. Hillary Clinton is currently a notable exception, especially considering her visits to Silicon Valley, including a trip to Google.

Digg’s Daniel Burka discussed the new page at Digg the Blog:

We

]]> http://www.webpronews.com/digg-unearths-presidential-candidate-tracking-2007-11/feed 0 http://www.webpronews.com/fox-pushed-to-free-presidential-debate-videos-2007-11 http://www.webpronews.com/fox-pushed-to-free-presidential-debate-videos-2007-11#comments Fri, 02 Nov 2007 11:16:05 +0000 WebProNews Staff http://www.webpronews.com/?p=41602 Followers of politics won’t see Michelle Malkin and DailyKos on the same page very often, but the cease and desist letters Fox News issued to Republican Presidential candidates regarding the use of debate videos have put them on the same side again.

Long after other major networks have relented and permitted the use of their debate videos, Fox News wants all the Republicans running for the Oval Office to stop using theirs.

It wasn’t always this way. Go back a week, where Talking Points Memo noted who received a cease and desist letter on video usage, and who didn’t. John McCain’s campaign got the copyright infringement letter; to McCain’s credit, his campaign declined that request.

Rudy Giuliani, a long-time friend of Fox executive Roger Ailes, had plenty of Fox material on his website. It didn’t seem like his campaign suffered from similar attention from Ailes’ legal people.

After that little conflict became more widely known, Fox told all of the Republicans not to use its videos. That garnered a response from MoveOn.org, reprising efforts in April of this year to have networks release Democratic debate videos for others to use.

“It is time that the presidential candidates from both parties stand with Senator McCain and defend his right to use this clip to advance his presidential campaign,” Stanford law professor Lawrence Lessig said on his blog.

“Not because it is “fair use” (whether or not it is), but because presidential debates are precisely the sort of things that ought to be free of the insanely complex regulation of speech we call copyright law.”

“One way to solve this is for all the candidates to pledge that they will not appear on any network’s debate unless that network frees the footage for all candidates and citizens,” Jeff Jarvis said at PrezVid.com. “It is, after all, our election.”

Prominent conservative voices like RedState.com blogger Eric Erickson and former Republican FEC Chair Brad Smith have also challenged Fox over the use of debate videos.

Though Fox has partially pulled itself away from a perceived conflict of interest by extending its demands to all Republican candidates, their stance runs counter to their motto of “We Report. You Decide.” It looks like people have decided they want fair use of debate video.

]]> http://www.webpronews.com/fox-pushed-to-free-presidential-debate-videos-2007-11/feed 0 http://www.webpronews.com/myspace-mtv-ready-for-presidential-dialogues-2007-09 http://www.webpronews.com/myspace-mtv-ready-for-presidential-dialogues-2007-09#comments Wed, 19 Sep 2007 16:24:29 +0000 Mike Sachoff http://www.webpronews.com/?p=40514 MySpace and MTV have announced details of their first Presidential Candidate Dialogue, which will feature former Senator John Edwards.

]]> MySpace and MTV have announced details of their first Presidential Candidate Dialogue, which will feature former Senator John Edwards.

The event will take place on Thursday, September 27, at 12:00 pm ET on the University of New Hampshire campus and will be moderated by MTV News Correspondents SuChin Pak and Gideon Yago along with Washington post.com political reporter, Chris Cillizza. John McLaughlin and Geoffrey Garin will manage the real-time polling data and audience questions being submitted through MySpaceIM and MTV.com.

Viewers following the online dialogue will be able to respond to what a candidate says with a new widget powered by Flektor. Viewers will have access to a ratings meter to express their approval or disapproval of a candiate’s responses as they watch the dialogue live with instant results displayed on the screen. Poll results will be available online live during each event and archived for future viewing.

"We’re providing America’s youth with unprecedented access to the top presidential candidates by empowering them to ask live questions and respond with real time polling tools," said co-founder and CEO of MySpace, Chris DeWolfe.

"The integration of Flektor will add a new dimension of rapid response and at-home engagement – we can’t wait to see it all happen live and unfiltered."

Other presidential candidates scheduled to participate in the dialogue include Democrats Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Christopher Dodd and Bill Richardson. Republicans include Rudy Giuliani, Duncan Hunter, Ron Paul, Mitt Romney, John McCain, and Sam Brownback.

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