Adoption of the World Wide Web by American Political Candidates, 1996-1998

Abstract The diffusion of the establishment of World Wide Web sites as a campaign tactic into the 1998 Congressional and Gubernatorial elections is examined based on the presumption that the more relative advantages a campaign perceives in establishing a site, the more likely they will be to adopt. Thus, campaigns which spent more money more frequently adopted. Incumbents, many of whom have non-campaign presences on the Web and thus see fewer benefits, adopted less frequently.