Washingtonpost.com: Issue Coverage Tracker
 After Howard Dean astonished the politerati by, gasp, using the Web in 2004, no candidate was going to get caught without an extensive online presence this time around. Neither was any news portal going to withstand the campaign season without launching at least one flashy interactive tool. Among some of the latest online endeavors, we like the Candidate Mashup from our own Yahoo! News (currently Democrats-only) and the Issue Coverage Tracker at Washingtonpost.com.
Drawing from online sources that include news organizations, bloggers, and interest groups, the Post's tracker pulls in commentary and coverage of the presidential race, and then presents the "mentions" in a way that shows graphically who's taking the most heat on what. Scroll over John McCain, for example, and see what issues are most associated with his name in online chatter (immigration, Iraq). Or look at hot button topics like abortion (Giuliani, Thompson) or Iraq (Clinton, Obama) for the candidates who are kicking up the most buzz. Click further and the tracker will dispatch you to the original sources. This is a snazzy piece of web design—and a refreshing way to see how the candidates are being assessed and critiqued online.
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