Sunday, January 11, 2004

By Adrian McCoy

What do the veteran campaign watchers think of the sites?

We asked two political heavyweights to share their views on candidates' Web sites:

Joseph Sabino Mistick, Democratic political analyst and Duquesne University law professor, says Web sites are most effective as tools for fund-raising and volunteer recruitment. "If you're already inclined to support a candidate, these sites give you a relatively easy way to participate," he says.

Because of the sheer volume of information on the sites, he believes they're more useful to a voter already supporting a candidate, as opposed to someone who's researching the entire field.

They're "clearly a tip of the hat to the younger voter," he says, noting the presence of Web logs, or blogs, on the sites. "I'm not sure how many middle-aged and older voters have ever heard of a blog."

One mistake they make is a common one in political campaigns, Mistick says. "They try to answer every question by every voter. In more traditional campaign advertising, we learned long ago that that doesn't work. Pick your issues -- keep them simple and present them as persuasively as possible."

Republican political consultant Bill Green rated the John Kerry and Wesley Clark sites the most successful in how they presented the Democratic candidates. "They're extremely clean and nicely organized."

He gave an average grade to Howard Dean's and Richard Gephardt's sites, although he thought the "meetups" section on Dean's site was effective in inviting people to get involved in his campaign. The Gephardt site relied too heavily on text as opposed to graphics.

But so far, he says, it's been Dean who has done the most with the Web. "Dean has managed to raise money with it and strike a chord with new voters."

E-mail this story   Print this story