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An important new study by two political scientists, Bruce Bimber of University of California at Santa Barbara and Richard Davis of Brigham Young, confirms what has been an established principle among political consultants since I started tracking online campaigning in 1998; the Internet is a great medium for communicating with your base, but not so great for attracting the attention of swing voters and converting them to your side.
The authors of "Campaigning Online" (forthcoming from Oxford University Press) studied voters nationwide and in Missouri before and after the 2000 elections. They probed the influence of the Internet in races for president, U.S. Senate, governor and secretary of state.
They learned that about 5 percent of U.S. adults saw either the Bush or Gore campaign Web sites. That's not a lot of voters, but the percentage is sure to grow by 2004 because there are more people online and more looking for political news and information.
However, only 21 percent of visitors to the Bush site were undecided when they first visited, and 19 percent for Gore. Sites for down-ballot candidates attracted even smaller percentages of undecideds. This percentage may not budge. Most campaign Web site visitors were supporters looking...