The Web on the Candidates

• Much digital ink has been spilled of late over Barack Obama's success in applying the lessons of Facebook/MySpace/LinkedIn to his campaign, and a new report from Pew uncovers an ace in his pocket: the Democratic base is simply much more experienced when it comes to online social networking. Of online Democrats, says Pew, 36% keep up social network profiles of one kind or another while just 21% of Republicans do the same.

• Another fun fact from Pew: nearly 40% of wired Americans bypass political news gatekeepers on TV, radio, and the Internet to get speeches, press releases, and memos straight from the campaign headquarters.

• The Pew study also reveals that more than a third of Americans online have already watched at least one Election '08-related video, and it may well have been the biting "I'm Voting Republican" short that has been viewed on YouTube more than a million times as of this morning. Not a bad bang for two thousand bucks, eh? As Wired's Sarah Lai Stirland points out, this one makes good use of the web by linking to the hard facts and figures behind the video's comic assertions.

• In a story important to political bloggers, the Associated Press is going after bloggers for quoting AP stories in their posts. Jeff Jarvis is rejecting the idea that the AP gets to define how things are done on the web.

The Candidates on the Web

• As flood waters rise in the American midwest, the Obama campaign is sending out a call via emails and blog posts for volunteers to come help sandbag in Illinois. It's intriguing to see a presidential campaign HQ direct some of its energy towards a social effort, but why no integration with MyBarackObama.com to let volunteers organize amongst themselves?

• Speaking of MyBarackObama.com, will answering the question "Can McCain compete with Obama online?" for Politico, Ben Adler reports that Obama's social network site has 926,000 members (a significant jump over the 800k or so reported last month), compared to the "tens of thousands of members" the John McCain campaign reports for its community-geared McCain Space.

• Ross Perot is baaaack! And he's brought his charts.

In Case You Missed It...

Dave Witzel highlights the fake Twitter battle between the fake John McCain and fake Barack Obama.

TechPresident's Alan Rosenblatt dives deep into the Pew Report