Web Politics 2.0 - ' Page 3' (
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States of the art
In the 2004 general election, U.S. Senate campaigns emerged at the hot center of online campaigning. The presidential campaigns, post-Dean, played things safe on the Web. Kerry and his managers followed Dean's lead by allowing reader comments to be posted at his Weblog. Bush essentially published press releases and called it a blog. Online, at least, both teams seemed to be playing not to lose.
But senate races became a proving ground for the next phase of Web politics. Statewide elections are big enough to leverage the economies of scale provided by the Web, but small enough that just a few volunteers make a difference. "The Internet may be most powerful at the local level," says Mele. "It lets groups without a big institution behind them communicate freely." At least a dozen major-party candidates for the senate had Weblogs, most of them Democrats. Reflecting the dynamics at work in the presidential campaign, Democratic candidates for the senate were somewhat more focused on grassroots outreach via Weblogs, while GOP candidates aimed more at organizational tools, such as lists of local party officials.
In Florida, Castor ran one of the nation's most active online campaigns in her unsuccessful race. Her BettyNet.com site organized hundreds of volunteers across the state by using tools such as event-planning software provided as a Web service by Meetup.com, and it also helped supporters to write e-mails and letters to the editors of local papers. The site even encouraged volunteers to "adopt" other Florida voters in order to communicate with them and urge them to vote early.
In a political climate where candidates fear making gaffes that can then be seized upon by their opposition and the media, the relative freedom of Web culture makes a lot of people nervous. The Kerry campaign took down its links to all external blogs when it felt the political risks of guilt by association were too great. But U.S. Senate candidate from Oklahoma, Democrat Brad Carson, did something different when confronted by the National Republican Senatorial Committee over linking to sites, including Daily Kos, which had published offensive remarks about some contractors killed in Iraq. "If you are one of my supporters, please read a varied list of sources, both liberal and conservative, so that you can better understand the world around you," the candidate wrote at his campaign blog. "If you are one of the NRSC's kind of folks, only read material that reinforces your political perspective." After drawing surprisingly close in the pre-election polls, the longshot Carson lost amid a Republican rout in Oklahoma.
At least one senate candidate faced a technical issue that other campaigns would have loved: huge spikes in traffic as people flocked to the site. When Barack Obama gave his star-making speech at the Democratic National Convention, traffic jumped to about 250 hits per second. "People felt they were speaking directly to him," says Rick Klau, a consultant to the Obama campaign. "And every time a network replayed a piece of the speech, there was another onslaught of hits. There were thousands of comments in a day."
For Obama, who cruised to an easy victory over Republican Alan Keyes, the real impact of his Web constituency could come after he takes office. "This will help raise him beyond the status of a typical rookie senator. It gives him a national base," says Klau. "The first time he sits across the table from someone representing another state, and that senator realizes that Obama has more e-mails from his colleague's state than he does—that's going to be an interesting moment."
Case Studies 
