WASHINGTON, Oct 5: If the US presidential election was being held in cyberspace, Barack Obama would win in a landslide.

The Democratic candidate has raised tens of millions of dollars more than Republican John McCain online and proven much more savvy overall at harnessing the power of the Internet, according to political and Web analysts.

Not surprising, perhaps, for a 47-year-old who is facing a 72-year-old who has admitted he does not use a computer and is seeking to become the oldest man ever elected to a first term in the White House.

“The real Obama story is that he’s using the Internet as a complete campaign strategy, not just to raise money, but to raise a volunteer organisation,” said Michael Malbin, executive director of the Campaign Finance Institute. “It’s the social networking, the mybarackobama.com site where people can find each other,” said Malbin of the Washington-based non-partisan institute.

“No other candidate has ever integrated the full picture the way he has, that’s what’s really new about his campaign.” Julie Germany, director of the Institute for Politics, Democracy and the Internet at George Washington University, said the Obama campaign “has been very effective by being highly experimental and by adapting Web technologies.

“They have used the Internet to collect information about people — your email, your zip code, who your friends are, what causes you care about,” she said.

Besides the all-important fund-raising and get-out-the-vote categories, Obama leads McCain in virtually every conceivable “e-campaign” metric, one month away from the Nov 4 vote.

The Illinois senator has more than 1.9 million supporters on Facebook.com compared to the Arizona senator’s 550,000 while over on rival social network MySpace.com, Obama has some 650,000 friends to McCain’s 150,000.

A MySpace survey of its users has Obama supporters outnumbering those of McCain in 45 states. McCain is more popular among MySpace users in just one state — Mississippi — while the other four are undecided.

More than 91,000 “followers” have registered to receive updates from Obama on Twitter, the popular micro-blogging service, while just 2,100 people get the short messages known as “tweets” about McCain.—AFP