A greater percentage of Coloradans search political websites, including those of presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama, than Web users anywhere else in the country, a national study shows.
“More than residents of any other state, Coloradans are following the election the closest, at least online,” said Matt Pace, director of Compete, a company that analyzes the Web searches of 2 million people across the country.
One in eight Coloradans, or 12.4 percent, of about 40,000 tracked in the analysis visited a candidate’s website or top political blog during September, Pace said.
The next highest percentage of politically minded Web users was in Connecticut, at 11.2 percent. The lowest percentages of Internet searchers clicking onto political sites were in Deep South states. In Louisiana and Arkansas, only 5.2 percent and 5.4 percent of Internet searchers, respectively, roamed political sites.
The study doesn’t explain why there is such a disparity, Pace said.
“It leaves us to read the tea leaves and make an educated guess,” he said.
Colorado is a battleground state that has voted Republican in the past three elections but is considered by many to be “in play” for Democrat Obama this year, Pace said.
Across the country, Obama supporters tend to be younger and more Internet savvy, he said.
Compete analyzed the Web usage of about 40,000 people in Colorado, and nearly 5,000 searched the presidential candidates’ sites or top party political blogs, Pace said.
The data doesn’t break the users down by political party, but a total of 73,291 visits were made to McCain sites and 136,276 to Obama sites.
“Obama’s the media candidate,” Pace said.
Kirk Mitchell: 303-954-1206 or kmitchell@denverpost.com
