Obama dominating race in cyberspace

If popularity on the Internet were a deciding factor, Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama would win by a landslide over Republican rival John McCain.

According to data compiled by Compete, a Web analytics company, Sen. Obama’s (Ill.) website is millions of hits ahead of Sen. McCain’s (Ariz.).

{mosads}The data shows Obama’s campaign site receiving 2.6 million unique visitors for the first week in October. McCain’s website had a little more than 1.3 million unique visitors.

Other services that measure Web traffic, such as Alexa and Hitwise, also show Obama well ahead of McCain in the war of the Web.

And according to data compiled by Nielsen, Obama had 7.9 million unique viewers in September, an increase of 31 percent from August and 156 percent since June.

Meanwhile, McCain had an even more drastic increase: His campaign website had 4.9 million unique hits in September, up 56 percent from the previous month and a 239 percent bump from June.

“Obama comes from the culture of the Internet,” said Andrew Rasiej, one of the founders of Techpresident, a website that tracks the presidential candidates' use of the Web and how campaigns use technology.

“He is recognized by Internet users as their own,” said Rasiej, adding that Obama has been mining the power of the Internet for much longer than McCain has. McCain’s campaign earlier this year struggled to stay afloat.

“The McCain campaign is still playing catch-up. His campaign almost died, but if you give him another year I am sure he would catch up,” Rasiej said.

Obama, who is ahead of McCain in the polls with just more than two weeks until Election Day, also has more friends on social networking sites like Facebook and is getting more YouTube hits.

Obama recognized that using social networks and YouTube could be very useful in engaging voters — particularly the young ones, said Matt Pace, director for political analysis with Compete.

“Rather than bringing people to your official website, you find where people are and have a presence there,” Pace said. By increasing the use of those avenues people would also go to the official website more often, he explained.

Obama was successful in creating the “Obama brand,” Pace noted. In many ways, Obama was successful over his rival Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) during the primary season by raising significant cash online.

By comparison, McCain won the nomination of his party without the creative use of the Web, despite the fact that other candidates such as former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and Rep. Ron Paul (Texas) had a stronger online strategy.

Obama’s campaign has made a concerted effort to reach young voters through mobile technology as well as the Web, and has implemented several different programs.

This week alone, Obama’s campaign released an Apple iPhone application that owners of the phone can download to get instant access to Obama’s positions on the issues, campaign news, photos and videos from the trail. The users can also share the news with their friends and have immediate access to Obama’s American headquarters or to local campaign events.

Obama’s campaign has also used text messaging to appeal to young voters, using the technology new to a presidential race to register new voters and make important announcements, such as the vice presidential pick of Sen. Joe Biden (Del.).

Both candidates had a significant spike in Web traffic in September coinciding with the aftermath of both the Democratic and Republican conventions. Voters' interest was also piqued by the selection of the vice presidential candidates, in particular McCain’s pick of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.

Both candidates have profiles on Facebook and MySpace, but Obama’s numbers are larger. On Facebook, Obama had more the 2 million supporters in the second week of October, while McCain had 564,000. For MySpace, Obama had 705,000 supporters this week and McCain had 170,946.

A day after the last debate Obama had a total of 81.3 million YouTube viewers, a 4 percent increase for Obama from Wednesday, while McCain had 21.6 million viewers, an increase of close to 6 percent.

Both Pace and Rasiej pointed out that McCain’s campaign has been very adept at using YouTube to fan out McCain videos.

“There are smart and tech-savvy people on both sides of the aisle,” said Pace.

Obama has continued to try to use the Internet to communicate on the latest debates within the campaign.

For example, it recently introduced the new taxcut.barackobama.com website, where voters can calculate their tax savings under the plan proposed by Obama and compare that to McCain’s. The website comes as a reaction to the McCain’s campaign allegation that Obama is planning to significantly raise taxes. According to Obama’s campaign, about 1 million people so far have logged on to the new website.

At the end of August, coinciding with the Democratic convention, Obama’s campaign launched an ad campaign for video game users to promote an online-registration and early-voting tool, known as VoteForChange.com. The ads targeted 10 battleground states that have early voting: Ohio, Iowa, Indiana, Montana, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Nevada, New Mexico, Florida and Colorado.

For the entire day on Oct. 1, Obama’s election machine placed ads nationwide on every Facebook homepage.

What will ultimately matter is how Obama can convert the “online enthusiasm into actual votes, said Rasiej. Rasiej said he believes that the successful online strategy will translate into votes for Obama.

“He is collecting massive amounts of data. He has a ground game that is being facilitated by technology,” he said.  “The [Internet] community generates a lot of money and he can use that money for traditional advertising, field organizing and getting out the vote.”

Obama’s campaign does not release numbers on how many direct hits it receives on the official website nor does it disclose how much money it raises through the website. But the campaign readily talks about the other Web-related efforts.

McCain’s campaign did not return several requests for comment by press time. McCain’s official website allows for online donations and for volunteer sign-up. The campaign also has released several Web ads.