There is no doubt that the 2008 U.S. presidential candidates have embraced the Web as a legitimate campaigning tool. But, I can’t help but wonder how much of this will actually matter come voting time. Are online frontrunners like Ron Paul and Barack Obama simply “pulling a Howard Dean?” The discrepancy between the Web stats and traditional polls is significant and can’t be ignored.

The political site techPresident has done a great job of compiling various Web stats for the candidates from sources like Technorati, Hitwise, Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Meetup, and Eventful (click the links to see the real-time charts). Consider how some of these compare against the recent polls from CNN and you get a real sense that we’re experiencing a campaign 2.0 bubble. Of course, maybe Ron Paul will win the election and the blogosphere will have proven me wrong.

The other fallacy of the recent growth in online campaigning is that the Web opens candidates up to the average citizen. From the recent CIO Magazine article, “The Web 2.0 Campaign for the White House”:

“The presidential candidates may disagree about Iraq, health care and taxes, but their campaigns demonstrate a clear consensus that the rise of Web 2.0 tools offers the chance to engage interested citizens, one market niche, one voter, one message at a time.”

I think the key word here is chance. “Web 2.0 tools offer the chance to engage interested citizens.” Mere political promises. I would love to see this actually happen, but the truth of the matter is that the majority of what we’re seeing online is not, in fact, intended to engage and/or involve the average citizen. The vast majority of politicians view the Web primarily as another medium through which they can push their established message. It’s partisan politics as usual and the top-down power structure has not yet given way to a more participatory, citizen-oriented political discourse.