• by Ross Fadner , December 2, 2003

Use of the Internet for information for next year's presidential race is expected to increase over the mid-term elections in 2002.

"Definite voters," which comprise 53.4 percent of the survey's 12,000 Web users, were the focus of the report released by BURST Media on Monday. Among definite voters, the Internet will play a much larger role as a resource for gathering information about candidates and the key issues they will cover than during the last election. Seventy percent of young adults between the ages of 18 and 24 plan to use the Internet for information on the upcoming election. The percentage is close to 60 percent in other definite voter age segments.

Older voters are also increasingly turning to the Internet for campaign information. Sixty-one percent of senior citizen voters plan to use the Internet for gathering info, which is 23.5 percent more than during the mid-term elections in 2002. Fifteen and twenty percent increases are also expected in the 45-54 and 55-64 age groups, respectively.

The expected increases are significant when you consider that only 47.3 percent of definite voters sought candidate or issue information during the last mid-term election.

The study reveals that online usage among definite voters is proportionate to how likely they will seek out campaign information online. In all, three out of five definite voters (59 percent) who spend twenty or more hours per week on the Internet say they have sought candidate or campaign issue information online versus one third (34.8 percent) who spend three hours or less per week on the Internet. Overall, nearly two thirds of definite voters say they will likely use the Internet for information in the upcoming election.

Interestingly, the number of women saying they will likely use the Internet to gather election information during the 2004 president election increased dramatically from the number who said they used the Internet during the past mid-term election. In fact, during the upcoming presidential election nearly equal numbers of women (61.6%) and men (64.3%) say they will likely use the Internet to gather candidate or issue information.

The upswing in female news consumers is quite apparent compared to a Pew Internet and American Life Study of the mid-term elections, which showed that online election news consumers were 61 percent male and only 43 percent female in 2002.

While the Internet is certainly becoming more essential to presidential campaigns, TV still reigns supreme as the source for election info, according to the Pew Internet and American Life Study. Even among web users who go online specifically for election news, the Internet is the primary source for 33 percent of these users while 50 percent of them still consider TV their primary source for such info. The Internet is the principal source of campaign news for 11 percent of online users and 7 percent of the general public, versus television, which is the primary source for 62 percent of Internet users and 66 percent of the general public.