Campaign Websites

If you want to get an idea of just how amateurish British politics is take a look at John McCain's exploratory committee website. The design may be what democrat blogger Atrios describes as "Imperial Stormtrooper Chic" but the clarity of the design and the technology at work is incredible. Check out the big video rollover buttons at the bottom in particular. There is also clearly so much more there for supporters or prospective supporters to do than on your average British party website, McCainSpace in particular. Barack Obama's website is similarly impressive although the technology is less startling. Hillary Clinton's is less impressive but there is still a lot going on. Giuliani's is the weakest.

In the UK the best web presence by some margin is WebCameron but it doesn't come close to the professionalism of McCain's website or the feature richness of Obama's. The ability to write your own WebCameron entries is a nice feature but there have to be questions about the value it adds, it isn't going to replace Blogger. Take a look at the networking, events and fundraising management tools on my.barackobama.com. That might be a good model for what parties can do to make real use of an interactive web presence.

On another note, my early prediction that Giuliani would win the Republican nomination is looking pretty sound. Web presence isn't everything I guess.