One-quarter of respondents to a Burst Media survey said the Internet is the best place to learn about a candidate’s position on election issues.
Likely voters ages 25 to 34 and 35 to 44 who responded to the survey led the Internet fans (about 30 percent in the age groups said the Net was the best spot for candidate and issue information). Among those ages 18 to 25, 24.5 percent voted for Internet, and about 21.3 percent of those 45 and older said the same.
Newspapers led as the information source of choice with respondents ages 45 and older as the best source for candidate information.
Many of the respondents had also already visited presidential campaign Web sites.
Burst Media surveyed more than 2,000 “likely” voters earlier this year for the survey.
What does this tell us?
I wrote in the Digital Edge column for the April edition of Presstime Magazine, “The presidential primaries begin in January 2008. By then, state and local candidates also will start coming out of the woodwork. That means there’s still time to build and plan quality newspaper Web site coverage of state and local elections, in addition to the national races.”
MySpace, Facebook, The Politico, TechPresident and PrezVid already have plans in place and running smoothly. Newspapers should have some plans in place by now. And those plans should take advantage of social networking, user-generated content and the newspaper’s vast local research resources (past and present) to create blockbuster election coverage at all levels.
If the Internet and print newspapers are both tops among likely voters looking for information on candidates and issues, imagine what a newspaper’s Web site can do -- and then do it.