Hitwise Press Release
Arnie terminates in the polls and online.
Auckland, 9th October 2003: Hitwise, the world's leading online competitive intelligence service has reported that
Arnold Schwarzenegger's website http://www.joinarnold.com/ was by far the most popular website in among U.S. Internet
users compared to other candidates. Schwarzenegger's website captured 123% more U.S. visits than his closest competitor
Tom McClintock ( http://www.tommcclintock.com/) for 10/6 and 900% more than Bustamante ( http://www.ltg.ca.gov/).
Hitwise has found that the correlation between online interest in candidates and election results has been quite strong.
Tessa Court, Senior Vice President Global Sales & Marketing for Hitwise says "Over the past three years, Hitwise has seen that websites are playing an incremental role
in political campaigns. In addition to watching the news or reading newspapers, voters can go online to learn about the
latest policies during a campaign."
After the live Debate on September 24, Arnold Schwarzenegger widened the gap in online market share between his closest
rival candidates. On Sept 24, www.joinarnold.com had only 8% more U.S. visits than www.tommclintock.com.
After the debate, US traffic to Join Arnold steadily increased as other candidates either decreased, or increased only
marginally.
In the U.S. the demographic profile of visitors to the Join Arnold website were predominantly Male (61.4%) aged 35-44
yrs (33.1%). Interestingly, nearly 40% of visitors to this site were Female, despite the recent sexual misconduct
allegations by a number of women.
According to Hitwise Search Terms Data, although the popularity of Schwarzenegger's website www.joinarnold.com toped all
other candidates in the online rankings, some of Schwarzenegger's competitors names were more popular among U.S. search
terms used to get to political websites.
'howard dean' 12.9%
'ann coulter' 6.1%
'arnold schwarzenegger' 5.3%
'michael moore' 4.6%
'abortion' 4.0%
'wesley clark' 3.8%
'democratic party' 3.1%
How did New Zealand Internet Users interact with Schwarzenegger's website?
According to Hitwise, Internet users in New Zealand logged onto the www.joinarnold.com website at a rapid rate over the
past few days. This activity caused Arnold Schwarzenegger's website to spear into an upward trend in the Hitwise
rankings from 311th most popular entertainment personality website on the 28th September to 29th most popular on the 1st
of October.
About Hitwise
Hitwise is the leading provider of online competitive intelligence services to Fortune 1000 corporations, providing
corporate marketers with real-time insights into their online competitive environment. Via a combination of ISP data
partnerships and opt-in mega panels, Hitwise collects anonymous information about the usage habits of more than 25
million Internet users worldwide, covering home, work and educational usage. With a categorized database of over 300,000
of the world's most popularly visited websites, Hitwise is able to offer a daily analysis of over 150 vertical markets
in each country of operation.
Hitwise is a privately held company and is headquartered in Melbourne, Australia and operates in New Zealand, UK, US,
Hong Kong, Australia and Singapore.