This could answer many questions.  But if the voter is not looking to understand but rather to reinforce some bias then this is a terrible turn of events.

A new study from the Pew Internet & American Life Project shows Internet technologies that are hot in the world of consumer goods sales are also working for those seeking the Oval Office.

The Pew report found nearly half of all Americans used the Internet, e-mail or mobile text messaging in ways relating to the primary campaigns this spring. Pew also found the percentage of adult Americans who went online daily to get political news or information more than doubled since the last presidential election, increasing to 17 percent from 2004’s level of 8 percent.

The message for Internet-naive candidates: Get onboard and sell yourself via the Web.

Another big online activity among those interested in the campaigns and those doing the campaigning was social networking. Pew figures 10 percent of Americans used sites such as Facebook or MySpace “to gather information or become involved” in the primaries.

Another Pew finding: People have become more comfortable doing money transactions online and that equated, in the primaries, to donating funds to their candidates of choice. Six percent donated online this spring, 4 percent more than in 2004, Pew determined.

Online advertising expert Michael Bassik, VP of interactive marketing at MSHC Partners, said that while the Pew report confirms the 2008 primaries saw extraordinary use of the Internet by interested people, the candidates might have missed the boat when it comes to advertising.

“When you look at the fact that nearly half of all adults got information about the primary through new media and compare that with fact that the candidates collectively spent less than 2 percent of their ad budgets to advertise on the Internet, clearly there is a tremendous disconnect between the amount of information people want to receive from the Internet and the amount of information candidates deliver to these audiences,” said Bassik.

This is good and this is bad–if the voters is truly searching for answer then this is an excellent turn, but if they are just looking to find worthless info that will increase their hatred or their bias–then this is not so damn good.  A personal note is that I have done a bit of impromptu polling and I would say that most voters are “low information voters”, which is a polite way of saying something derogatory, but beyond that, I have found that most that I have talked with have been looking for anything that will reinforce their bias.