Blog advertiser goes to Congress

Ben Chandler, blog advertiser and Democratic candidate for U.S. Congress, won his special election today in Kentucky. Josh Marshall notes that this was also a victory for Internet fundraising:

As you’ll notice there on the left, the Chandler campaign has been advertising for about the last two weeks on this and a number of other blogs. The campaign budgeted about two grand for blog advertising. And my understanding is that by today they had raised close to $100,000 from contributors who linked through from those blogs on which the campaign was advertising.

In other words, they got roughly a 50-fold turnaround on their investment in the final two weeks of the campaign. And in case you’re wondering one hundred grand is a lot of money in a House race.

Now, obviously that’s exciting news for proprietors of blogs looking to open up revenue streams from advertisers. But the bigger story here is about the Democrats and the Internet, and the way this technology seems to click, shall we say, for the Democratic demographic.

Update: Tongue in cheek, Prof. Reynolds writes that Chandler’s win is “entirely because of the blogads!”