Michael Caulfield, professor of political science at George Washington University said, “Politics is lagging, but politics is not going to be immune to the digital revolution.”

In 2004 a Californian named Joseph Anthony became one of the first online activists to successfully promote the idea of a presidential bid in 2008. He created a page on a popular website, , devoted to Obama and signed up 160,000 “friends”, far more than any other candidate has attracted.

Interesting enough, nearly half of the contributions to the Obama campaign during the first quarter of the year gave money online, and much of the success of his campaign can be attributed to the support of the thousands of bloggers and other online activists.

“In the last ten days of the Bush campaign, more than 150 different email messages were sent out to nearly 1 million voters”, said Larry Purpuro, Deputy Chief of Staff for the campaign. “We believe electronic word-of-mouth is the best form of voter contact. It’s personalized, it’s targeted and it works with lightning speed.”

Not to be outdone, John Kerry’s 2004 presidential campaign reported that 80% of his contributors between 18 and 34 did so online. The Internet is a potent way to attract new young voters, a subject of serious interest to both parties!

"The effect of the Internet on politics will be every bit as transformational as television was."  "If you want to get your message out, the old way of paying someone to make a TV ad is insufficient: You need your message out through the Internet, through e-mail, and talk radio." said Ken Mehlman, the Republican National Chairman.

Email has replaced telephones as a way of lining up volunteers for everything leading up to election day. It started simply, and has now become a powerful way to mobilize supporters getting them out to the polls. Grassroots email efforts have sprung up as ordinary voters urge their friends to vote for their chosen candidates.

Some of the better financed campaigns have provided web-based tool kits to help their supporters write their own messages, in effect starting their own email campaigns.

Democrats and Republicans are taking the next step by using leading edge social networking techniques in addition to: interactive websites, candidate and party blogs as well as text messaging to raise money, organize get-out-the-vote efforts and assemble crowds and rallies. The Internet is far more effective and less costly than door knocking and telephone banks.

*** Check out Part 3 in our series: “Internet Political Campaigning goes Negative”