How Voters Are Using the Internet

October 23, 2008 2:35 PM | | Comments (0)

A new Pew Research Center survey conducted Oct. 16-19 has painted a picture of what kind of role the Internet is playing in this year's campaign.

Fifty-nine percent of voters say they have sought out some kind of election content on the web or have engaged in some kind of online communication about the campaign. While some of the comparisons between use of the Internet now and last December are no doubt skewed by the fact that we're actually in the thick of the election battle, there were big jumps in the numbers of voters watching political videos (from 24 percent to 39 percent), e-mailing about politics (18 percent to 37 percent) and visiting candidate websites (16 percent to 23 percent).

One element of Internet use that has not grown much is the use of social networking sites like MySpace or Facebook for campaign information.

Democrats tended to be the heaviest consumers of blogs with 30 percent saying they read them, compared to 27 percent for independents and 23 percent for Republicans. They also were the biggest users of political videos, with 43 percent saying they went online to watch compared to 41 percent for independents and 35 percent for Republicans.

The numbers for younger voters are higher. Sixty-five percent of voters under 29 have followed political videos online and 42 percent read blogs.

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Categories: Pew Research Center

Tags: internet

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