Internet’s Role in Campaigns Still Limited

When it comes to online electioneering, few candidates have been as aggressive as Sen. Barbara Boxer, who has bought more banner ads, fired off more e-mail updates and collected contributions from more cyber-citizens than almost any other candidate nationwide.

But come election day, Boxer campaign manager Rose Kapolczynski expects this concerted digital push to be worth about as much as “a well-placed billboard on the 405.”

The 1998 election is shaping up as the most wired in history, with a majority of candidates across the nation stumping online and high percentages of voters--including 45% in California--logged on.

But despite hopes that the Internet might offer an antidote to this politically disengaged age, it has mainly been used as a supplement for politics as usual--and an often ineffective one at that.

It’s true that the Web and e-mail have made it far easier for candidates to communicate directly with citizens. But so far, the only ones paying much attention are those who have long been among the most politically plugged in anyway.

And while many candidates have tried to use the Internet to reach new voters and draw the disillusioned back into the fold, most are finding it more effective as a lubricant for their traditional political machinery--backing up TV ads, getting out news releases and mobilizing volunteers.

“Many believed the Internet was going to reach a new crowd, inform the uninformed and draw people into the process,” said Bruce Bimber, a professor of political science at UC Santa Barbara. “But it’s exactly the opposite.”

Recent surveys by Bimber show that most people using the Net as a political resource are already highly inclined to vote and are heavy consumers of news and information from other sources. “The Net is serving as a tool for people who are already inclined toward politics,” he said.

If the Internet does have a negligible electoral impact this election, as Bimber and many others expect, it will be in contrast to the power the medium has shown in broader political settings this year. The posting of the independent counsel’s report on the president in September, for instance, was widely seen as an awesome demonstration of what only this new medium can do.

On a much smaller scale, the Internet has become an important tool for local government, with many municipalities putting everything from complaint boxes to applications for marriage licenses online.

But in the frenzied world of political campaigning, the Net is still struggling to find its role--increasingly seen as something campaigns dare not do without, but also something they’re not quite sure what to do with.

Internet Campaign Expenditures Low

At least 63% of the politicians in local, state and federal campaigns across the country are using the Internet, according to a July survey by the political magazine Campaigns & Elections. Another 20% said they expected to be using the Net by election day.

But most campaigns earmarked tiny sums for their online efforts, saying they planned to spend less than $2,000 on their Web sites this year. That means the 1998 election could be a replay of 1996, when national and gubernatorial candidates spent $1.5 billion campaigning, but allocated just $6 million to the Web, according to Edwin Diamond, professor of political science at New York University.

Media and political analysts rightly point out that the Net is still in its infancy and that even television took years to realize its potential.

“We may be expecting too much of the poor Internet,” said Gary Selnow, a professor of communication at San Francisco State who wrote a book about Internet politics. “Television didn’t become a force in politics until 1956, eight years after the introduction of the home television set.”

Television didn’t make its mark, the argument goes, until it was in roughly 85% of American households. Computers are still in fewer than half of American homes, and only a fraction of those are connected to the Net.

But political gurus say the problem for the Internet as a campaign weapon has less to do with market penetration than with audience fragmentation. In the 1960 presidential election, there were only three TV networks, all of which carried the fateful Kennedy-Nixon debate. Even if the Internet were ubiquitous, its audience might never be that focused.

Indeed, one problem politicians have online is attracting enough eyeballs to make digital campaigning worthwhile. Some candidates have bought banner ads on more popular Internet sites in an effort to drive traffic to their own Web sites, with limited success.

Boxer’s campaign, for instance, spent $7,000 on banner ads, and boosted traffic to the https://www.boxer98.org site by about 20%. But banner ads are little more than digital bumper stickers, and most campaigns still see TV as a much higher spending priority.

“If a person is not looking for political information, they’re not going to come to our site or click our ad,” Kapolczynski said. “That’s a significant difference from TV, where, when you purchase an ad on ‘ER,’ you know the number of people you’re reaching.”

Some have tried to get around this problem by sending e-mail to prospective voters, only to get flamed by arbiters of online etiquette. In Georgia, state Sen. Steve Langford sent out a mass e-mail as part of his unsuccessful bid for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination and quickly learned that unsolicited e-mail is the ultimate online sin.

“We got vulgar, profane responses,” Langford said.

Supplementing TV Attack Ads

Most candidates have been content to use the Web as a prop for bland “brochureware.” But a few have used it to launch attacks that are both clever and aggressive.

In a heated congressional race in Washington, Brian Baird put opponent Don Benton on the defensive by calling attention to his state Legislature attendance record in a Web site whose address, https://www.missedvotes.com, speaks for itself.

In the few weeks it’s been up, the site has sparked a flurry of visits and news stories. Still, it was designed solely to supplement TV ads making the same point.

“There just aren’t enough people online to assume you’re going to change people’s minds,” said Lynn Reed, the creator of the site and an online political strategist who handled the 1996 Clinton-Gore site.

Despite its limitations as an outreach tool, the Net is emerging as an important tactical aid within campaign organizations. Like many others, the campaign of Republican Senate candidate Matt Fong, Boxer’s opponent, has used the Net to e-mail thousands of supporters every day, notifying them of rallies and other events. The campaign has also raised about $25,000 on its Web site, https://www.fong98.org--regarded as a promising sum even though it is just a fraction of the $10 million the campaign expects to spend.

“Two election cycles ago, having a Web site was primarily a publicity stunt,” said Steve Schmidt, press spokesman for Fong. “Now it is a tactical tool used every day.

“Eventually, it will decide an election,” Schmidt said. “But that’s not going to happen this cycle.”