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BUSINESSWEEK ONLINE: Business Week ebiz | |||||||||||||||||
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Campaign 2000: How the Candidates Stack Up -- on the Web The Presidential front-runners are trailing the insurgents when it comes to cyber-savvy As the new year begins, the candidates for President are unpacking their long underwear for the quadrennial midwinter showdowns in Iowa and New Hampshire. But something's different in the 2000 campaign. The Presidential race is being fought not only in the cafes on Main Street but also in cyberspace. At this point, there's no correlation between position in the polls and the quality of campaign Web sites, since sites of early front-runners Vice-President Al Gore and Texas Governor George W. Bush lag behind those of their challengers. Their sites (www.algore2000.com and georgewbush.com) are respectable but not spectacular. The best is www.forbes2000.com, operated by Republican candidate Steve Forbes. The millionaire publisher may be struggling in the polls, but his site has the professionalism and polish of a first-class corporate site. It's user-friendly, informative, and quite effective at selling its product, Citizen Forbes. A voter can search for Forbes's positions on any issue under the sun, send feedback to the campaign, or check out the latest television spots. While all the major candidates are posting TV ads on their Internet sites, Bush and Gore don't have an easy-to-use search function, leaving voters with a cumbersome task if they want information on an issue that is not at the top of the agenda. But the candidates who stand to benefit the most from their Web sites are the ³outsider² insurgents in each party, Democrat Bill Bradley (www.billbradley.com) and Republican John McCain (mccain2000.com). Without the institutional advantages of the front-runners, Arizona Senator McCain and former New Jersey Senator Bradley are attempting to use the Internet to put together both grassroots organizations and fund-raising operations. Thus far, they are succeeding admirably. To date, Bradley leads all of the candidates by raising $1.3 million online, while McCain on Dec. 28 announced that he had reached the million-dollar mark. Gore is close behind with $900,000, Bush trails badly at $180,000, and Forbes is farther back. Only McCain's site tells you how many people have visited, though: McCain2000 scored 141,000 visits in October and more than 340,000 in December, as interest in his candidacy grew. Contributions made online to McCain's campaign zoomed from $3,150 a day in the summer to almost $10,000 daily in December.
Forbes takes online organizing a step further. While McCain and Bradley use the Net to help put together a traditional political machine, Forbes is breaking new ground. He is organizing "e-precincts" that allow volunteers to create communities of interest online. These communities can be based on geographical closeness, family ties, or common interests in issues, and the site lets Forbes backers send electronic postcards to friends, family, or other targeted voters. The more than 30,000 people organized online by Forbes will be crucial if he is to ever escape the campaign's second tier. But a campaign site's ultimate job is to persuade people to vote for their candidate. So who does the best here? Once again, the answer is Forbes. BIG STEP FORWARD. The Forbes site has an exhaustive listing of his positions on issues, with an easy-to-use search feature. It catalogues his speeches and allows Web surfers to check out television commercials, interactive town hall meetings, and the radio commentaries he offers to stations across the country. Gore also does a bang-up job on issues and biographical information. His multimedia library includes sound bites on major issues, video of campaign appearances, a biographical film, television ads, and made-for-the-Web infomercials. Americans can "ask Al" in an interactive town hall. Forbes's is the best simply because of the sheer volume of material available. But the way both Gore and Forbes have set up this material prevents many users with slow Internet connections from using it. Bush campaign advisers admit they were slow to catch on to Web campaigning. For months, the Bush site lagged far behind Forbes and McCain, whose site has gone from humdrum to excellent in the past three months. Bush has narrowed the gap, but he has a long way to go. His site is less interactive than either McCain's or Gore's, and, unlike his major rivals, he doesn't make specific appeals to women or young voters. Bush took a big step forward on Dec. 30, when he unveiled a searchable database of his campaign donations -- a voluntary disclosure that is not required by federal law. This kind of public disclosure is likely to become the norm in years to come, and Bush is indeed a trailblazer.
As the new century dawns, the Internet is beginning to play a role in Presidential campaigns. Underdog candidates such as Bradley and McCain can get a boost from their campaign Web sites -- but probably not a big enough one to capture a nomination. An apt analogy is to television's role in Presidential campaigns before 1960. Campaign Web sites -- and the Internet in general -- will become increasingly important in American political campaigns. But it probably will take another two election cycles before that major role is realized. Dunham covers the White House for Business Week. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ |
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 WEB POINTERS Read our review, then try the sites: Al Gore George W. Bush Steve Forbes Bill Bradley John McCain | ||||||||||||
