Lately, I have been making a collection of innovative uses of digital media in the electoral context, for an ad-hoc report I am invited to work on. Here are a couple of examples I am personally impressed with.

First, the Candidate Match Game put up by USA Today [below]. In an earlier post, I wrote about VoteMatch, a website that calculates for you which party or candidate is most matched to your political preferences. This is an American equivalent - with an obvious American flavour added.

The second one is something called the Issue Coverage Tracker by the Washington Post. It's a rather nicely visualised archive of media coverage of the candidates for the US presidential election of 2008.

You can see a breakdown by major issue categories or candidates. If you click on a candidate, it displays in relation to which issue among the 9 he/she receives most and least media coverage. Likewise, if you click on an issue, it will show which candidate is most mentioned in relation to the given issue. If you click through, you can also access original sources including news organisations, political parties, interest groups, bloggers, etc. You can also have widgets to track certain candidates of your choice on your blog or MySpace/Facebook page, of course.

Following election coverage couldn't be easier than this, could it? Only if you care enough to make a few clicks and are willing to read...

* Thanks to Han for alerting me to these.

** Cross-posted on my website.