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net election: Tracking politics as it's practiced on the Web.

How the Campaigns Add UpA paint-by-numbers portrait of the presidential election campaigns in 2000.

By Matthew Yeomans
Posted Friday, April 28, 2000, at 3:00 AM ET

Slate and the Industry Standard join forces to examine the effect of the Internet on Campaign 2000.

Politicians will tell you just about anything they think you want to hear. As both Democrats and Republicans prefer to choose sides in a Cuban family soap opera rather than debate real issues, we call on the numbers once again for the real political story.

1. Ratio of searches on the Lycos search engine for "George Bush" to those for the TV show Days of Our Lives, week ending April 22: 1 to 1

2. Ratio of searches on Lycos for "Al Gore" to those for the TV show Rugrats, week ending April 22: 1 to 1

3. Ratio of searches on Lycos for "Pat Buchanan" to those for the TV show All in the Family, week ending April 22: 1 to 1

4. Period of time between the launch of the gwbush.com parody site and a letter of complaint about the site sent by Bush campaign to the Federal Election Commission: 1 month

5. Period of time it took the FEC to reject the Bush campaign's complaint: 11 months

6. Months that the U.S. Supreme Court has had its own Web site: 1

7. Months that the Mongolian Supreme Court has had its own Web site: 24

8. Date the George W. Bush Web site issued a statement criticizing the April 22 Elián González raid—April 22

9. Number of days it took the Al Gore Web site to issue any statement on the Elián González raid: still counting

10. Date the algore2000 Web site issued Gore's pledge of support for April 22's Earth Day: April 22

11. Number of days it took the George W. Bush Web site to issue any statement in support of Earth Day: still counting

12. As of this afternoon, the number of signatures for PetitionOnline's "Send Elián Home" e-mail petition to President Clinton—19,277

13. Number of e-mail messages sent to President Clinton from LibertyforElian, a Web site trying to keep Elián González in the United States: more than 50,000

14. Campaign contributions to Al Gore from dot-com workers, according to the FEC's break-down of contributor occupations in March: $9,500

15. Campaign contributions to George W. Bush from dot-com workers, according to the FEC's break-down of contributor occupations in March: $11,250

SOURCES

1. Lycos

2. Lycos

3. Lycos

4. Early April to May 4, 1999: RTMark.com, GWBush.com

5. April 18: Washington Post

6. Center for Democracy and Technology

7. Center for Democracy and Technology

8. Georgewbush.com

9. Algore2000.com

10. Algore2000.com

11. Georgewbush.com

12. PetitionOnline.com

13. LibertyforElian.org

14. FECInfo.com

15. FECInfo.com

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Matthew Yeomans has covered everything from the dot-com bust to the global oil boom. Today, he is founder of Custom Communication, providing social media strategy and branded content for companies.
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