OT: Poll indicates 38% get information from the Internet

[ProSense]

Associated Press-AOL News poll conducted by Ipsos Public Affairs. Oct. 20-25, 2006. N=1,621 registered voters nationwide. MoE ± 2.4 (for all registered voters).

"Do you ever get news or information about candidates and campaigns for the upcoming elections from the Internet or not?"

...............................Yes.......No
10/20-25/06..............38%......62%

Asked of those who answered "Yes" to question above:
"For each of the following, please tell me if you have used this resource as a way of obtaining information about candidates and the campaign for the upcoming congressional elections on the Internet, or not. How about . . . ?"

...............................Yes.......No
News sites.................86%.....14%
Political web sites........46%.....54%
Candidates' web sites...36%.....64%
Blogs.........................24%.....76%

There were 122 million actual voters in 2004, which means 46 million (38%) voters get their information from the Internet. Of that:

21 million - political sites (46%)
17 million - candidate sites (36%)
11 million - blogs (24%)

That means about 10% of the population is getting information directly from blogs. That's a significant number!

[babylonsister]

1. It would be great to see a further breakdown; it all depends on

which sites they're getting their info. But I agree, it's good, and people at least have the ability to educate themselves.

And is DU considered a political site or a blog?

[Democrafty]

2. That's good news.

I hope we can grow that number in the next year or so.

[Dr Ron]

3. And they vote for Kerry

I recall after the Iowa caucus there was a poll out which showed that the majority of the people who got information from the internet voted for Kerry.

There's a limit to the signficance of this. Since Kerry won it isn't much of a surprise that he also won among most subsets, including people who get info from the internet. However it does show that the people who get info from the internet are similar to those who get info elsewhere and they weren't a bunch of Dean supporters despite far more hype about the Dean blog.

[karynnj]

4. It's also good that the JohnKerry site is great right now

They have lots of information on the work he's doing for candidates and things like the text of at least 10 important speeches. There's lots of video too. That should help if he does run.

[Dr Ron]

5. Also shows we can use blogs to get out the important info

I've had many posts on the Granholm DeVos race in Michigan at Liberal Values and from the search engine hits it appears it may be paying off.

DeVos is trying to run entirely on the economy while playing down his extremely far right social views--views which are far right even by current Republican standards. Of course I've been posting about them.

I'm getting a tremendous number of search engine hits for Granholm and DeVos (although not as many as for Britney Spears but this has moved ahead of Caroline being fired from Apprentice). Just today I got hits from Google searches for questions regarding DeVos's view on stem cells and on gay marriage. If people have to run a search to ask, most likely it is people who don't know how conservative DeVos is, and hopefully this has influenced their vote. (I think the religious right is already well aware that DeVos is one of them. For example, after trying to downplay his opposition to abortion in a debate broadcast state wide, he was on a religious radio network the next day bragging about how there has never been a stronger anti-abortion candidate running than him.)

Hopefully in 2007-8 when people look up things like Swift Boat and Kerry's position on Iraq, they will come across the pro-Kerry blogs which set the record straight.

[mloutre]

6. And it's not just from the blogs. And it's not just JK. Though that helps.

This has been written about elsewhere, here in some DU threads and on another blog or two out there, but it's summarized quite succinctly here:

http://www.democracycellproject.net/blog/archives/2006/12/think_your_comm_1.html#comments

Opening intro text:


-----------

A lot of the time we find ourselves talking to ourselves. Or at least it seems that way.

We're online activists, you and I. Except during the biannual campaign seasons, when we are out there putting our boots on the ground, most of the time we're in here putting our butts in our chairs and putting our movement where our mouses are instead.

We spend a lot of our time blogging, commenting, and interacting online in what's really a relatively small part of the overall cybersphere. When we spend all our time reading and writing in the rarified atmosphere of political blogs, we usually end up either preaching to our own choirs or preaching against the other side's choirs.

It's easy to forget that there's life beyond the blogs. It's easy to forget that we can electronically comment to MSM and other media sites as well. And it's easy to overlook that what we have to say when we do comment outside our own little blog bubbles affects people who'd never come to the DCP or to DU or to DKos.

Here's just one example of how it can work when we do look beyond our blog bubbles, though.

While this example happens to reference a particular public official by name, he's not a candidate and we're not endorsing him and that's not the point of this thread header anyway -- the point of it is that when we do take time to put the word out, the word gets out farther than we ever expected sometimes.