Politicians will tell you just about anything they think you want to hear. But this year's real story beams through in numbers. Here's our latest attempt to shape the numbers into a narrative. It says as much about those of us who surf the Net as it does about the politicians who are using the Net to get votes (especially when they try to get them in Spanish). (For earlier "by the numbers" reports, click here and here.)

1. Ratio of searches in Lycos search engine for "George Bush" to those for "Buddhism," first week in April: 1 to 1

2. Ratio of Lycos searches for "Al Gore" to those for "Horses for Sale": 1 to 1

3. Percentage of Americans who'd be comfortable buying a used car from George W. Bush, according to AutoTrader.com: 39

4. Percentage of Americans comfortable buying a used car from Al Gore: 34

5. Mentions of "little" Elián González on the George W. Bush—En Español home page: 4

6. Mentions of "little" Elián on Viva, Al Gore's Spanish-language home page: 0

7. Date Hillary Clinton admitted that she had yet to go online: Feb. 20, 2000

8. Number of days later that Rudy Giuliani declared he knew how to surf the Web: 34

9. Number of unique visitors to John McCain's Web site in March, the month he dropped out of the presidential race: 228,000