WHEN John Kerry stood up to accept his party鈥檚 nomination for president at the Democratic National Convention in Boston last month his website was receiving more than 5000 hits per second. The internet is becoming a potent force in politics as politicians learn how to exploit it. They鈥檙e not only using it in the most obvious way 鈥� to get their policies across to the wider electorate 鈥� but also to raise money.
The internet is now the largest source of money for the Kerry campaign, yielding $44 million from March to May this year (see Graph). On the day he accepted the Democratic nomination, Kerry raised a record $5.6 million through credit card donations on his website (). Bloggers (web loggers) are also beginning to make a difference in some election campaigns, raising money and creating a buzz.
The Republicans have not been as successful at exploiting the internet as the Kerry campaign, but they still attract large sums of money from big donors through fund-raising committees. In the 18 months between the beginning of 2003 and the end of June this year, Republican committees working for the re-election of George Bush raised $470 million. Over the same period the Democrats only raised $280 million
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Fund-raising through the internet barely figured in the last presidential campaign. But Howard Dean, the Vermont governor who stood for the Democrat nomination this time round, changed all that. Dean used the internet to organise volunteers, set up meetings between his backers, and coordinate the collection of campaign contributions. He also created a unique buzz on the net about his campaign by establishing a web log, a frequently updated, running diary that Dean and his staff used to provide snapshots of the campaign鈥檚 progress.
Since then local and national politicians have leapt on the internet bandwagon. 鈥淲hat鈥檚 becoming clear is that the internet is a different kind of medium than folks thought,鈥� says Christine Williams, a professor of government at Bentley College in Waltham, Massachusetts. People expected, she says, that it would be like television, educating people about the issues and levelling the playing field for candidates.
鈥淭he internet is not a mass medium of communication, it鈥檚 a targeted medium of communication, and what the internet does for political campaigns is all the back-end stuff 鈥� raising money, recruiting volunteers, facilitating communications within your campaign and with your base.鈥� Williams thinks that from now on candidates will lose votes and eventually lose office if they fail to exploit the net. 鈥淚t鈥檚 analogous to John F. Kennedy figuring out how to use television in 1960.鈥�
Just as impressive as the party鈥檚 official campaigns are private bloggers who are convincing their readers to donate to political campaigns. One of the most successful has been Markos Moulitsas Z煤niga, owner and main blogger at the Daily Kos site (). Moulitsas, a Democrat backer, has raised $80,000 for John Kerry鈥檚 campaign and $75,000 for the Democratic party, simply by directing his readers towards the credit card donation sites of each. The Democrat campaign uses tracking software to keep note of which sites donations come from.
National campaigns aren鈥檛 the only targets to which Moulitsas directs his readers. He has raised almost $150,000 for Congressional candidates he favours, from almost 3000 individual donors 鈥� an average of $50 each. This money is more important to local candidates, because congressional races can cost a mere $1 million, compared with the hundreds of millions needed for presidential campaigns. 鈥淚鈥檓 not looking for any influence in the campaigns themselves,鈥� says Moulitsas, whose site is averaging 200,000 readers a day. 鈥淚t鈥檚 more a matter of being able to reward good behaviour.鈥�
Another prominent blogger, who goes by the name Atrios, has raised almost $300,000 for the Kerry campaign, and smaller amounts for some congressional campaigns. Atrios, who runs a semi-commercial blog site at , was until recently completely anonymous, but unmasked himself at the Democratic National Convention as Duncan Black from Philadelphia.
Increasing public trust in the internet has played a role in boosting political donations. 鈥淭hey use the internet to buy airline tickets, and they鈥檙e more comfortable giving their credit card online than ever before,鈥� says Alexis Rice, a fellow in the Washington Center for the Study of American Government at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. 鈥淛ust like you can host a fund-raising party at your house, and have people contribute to the campaign, people are using new tools and new innovations to raise money for their candidates.鈥�
