Abstract
Obama's recent success in the 2008 US presidential election owns much to his ability and the one of his followers to use the internet as a core political tool in his campaign. Over the last years in the US online campaigning has become a key tool in one's attempt to win an election; and the trend is likely to keep on further. The USA appears to be one of the only countries in the world to have reached such a level of online campaigning to have an undeniable impact on voters' behavior and therefore election results. The contrast with most European Union countries, and notably the UK, is striking.
However it would be too easy to pin the blame on the fact that such trend is due to the gap in the proportion of people considered as online in both countries, namely 76 in the USA and 60 in the UK in 2005 (Anstead and Chadwick: 2009; 56). One may consider rather that the best way to understand the reasons for such tendency lies in an astute analysis of both political institution respective characteristics'; and more especially their particular relationship with the Internet in the large sense.
