A new report from the Pew Internet and American Life Project finds that a record-breaking 46 percent of Americans have used the Internet, e-mail or cell phone text messaging to get news about the campaigns. Analysts examine how new Web-based tools are expanding the campaign trail.

With Barack Obama moving close to victory in the Democratic presidential primary campaign, the internet has proved one of the key tools to his success. And it may well give the Democrats a big advantage during the Presidential race itself.

The internet is revolutionizing the American election campaign. Felicity Spector finds out how sites like YouTube are spawning new ways of reaching voters and raising cash.

The online world has been touted as a transformative agent for politics since the late 1990s, but never quite lived up to its hype. This year, it looks like it has.

Evidence abounds this presidential election year that the Internet is increasingly competing with TV, newspapers and other traditional media outlets - and sometimes beating them - as a primary source of political news.

The internet is living up to its potential as a major source for news about the presidential campaign. Nearly a quarter of Americans (24%) say they regularly learn something about the campaign from the internet, almost double the percentage at a comparable point in the 2004 campaign (13%).

The 2008 election is the first real Internet campaign, but online strategy and technology remain works in progress. Joe Trippi is rolling down I-95 toward Charleston, S.C., headed for a debate he could only have imagined four years ago. A senior adviser to the John Edwards presidential campaign, Trippi helped pioneer Web politics as Howard Dean's campaign manager during the 2004 election. Now, though, Internet campaigning is mainstream. "No one's laughing this time," Trippi says. "There are all these amazing ways for people to connect with a campaign, to follow it, or create their own mini-campaigns, things that didn't exist or barely existed last time."

Small donors are having a significant impact on the amount of money that the Republican and Democratic candidates for president are raising. The Internet, providing the tools for grassroots activists to self-organize and conduct "p-commerce" by giving political money online, has clearly contributed to this.