The nearby grocery store offers bags of corncobs billed as do-it-yourself entertainment: just toss a few in your yard and watch the amusing antics of squirrels, deer and other neighborhood outdoor citizens.

I couldn?t help but think of that bag while looking at the coverage of the latest poll from The Pew Research Center for the People & The Press and the Pew Internet & American Life Project. We toss corncobs to critters. Likewise, researchers toss polls and studies at us, then watch while we nibble.

		I?m not sure why the Associated Press was fascinated by something that has seemed glaringly obvious for years: Republicans, especially conservatives, are better at using the interactivity of the Internet for politics.

Take, for instance, the spate of print, online and broadcast stories this week about the tendency of Republicans to vote more often than Democrats or Independents in online surveys.

I?m not sure why the Associated Press was fascinated by something that has seemed glaringly obvious for years: Republicans, especially conservatives, are better at using the interactivity of the Internet for politics.

Based on little more than observation, we know this: Republicans intent on getting around the mainstream media labeled as ?liberal? and ?anti-conservative? latched on to the Internet early on as an enabler.  According to Pew, Republicans were far more likely than Democrats to say they went online for news because they could not get everything they wanted from traditional sources.

But we also know from experience that the overload of any group can tilt the results of online surveys. News sites persist in creating such surveys -- then report breathlessly -- even though the only thing such efforts really gauge is the number of people willing to participate and even that can be suspect depending on the software.

In other words, the headline news here is that something already based on the faultiest of foundations is used more often by one political party than any other.  Never mind that even the way we report and use scientifically implemented polls is a source of constant debate.
 
Some picked up the tidbit from the Pew poll that television is still the main source for election news. (Franco is still dead, too, by the way.)  The hook for this, according to the headline on the Pew news release, is the ?Modest Increase in Internet Use for Campaign 2002.?

Both items are among the least interesting ways to read the poll conducted among a sample of 2,745 adults by Princeton Survey Research Associates between Oct. 30 and Nov. 24. The most intriguing aspects are hidden in plain sight in the white space surrounding the questions Pew chose and the reported results. 

For instance, the decline since 1996 in Internet users reading a newspaper for election news is noted but Pew didn?t ask if they turn to the newspaper?s online edition instead. (A tip of the virtual hat to Rebecca Fairley Rainey, who raised that issue in her unbylined report for The New York Times.) It?s entirely possible that the source of information remained the same while the distribution method changed.

Thirty-one percent of the respondents said they went online for news while 33% said they read newspapers. Pew could have actually added something to the sum of knowledge by asking if they read the newspaper online.

The poll also doesn?t measure election Internet use against the backdrop of overall Internet use or against the increases in people going online, although it does go into some of the demographic comparisons. Those online for less than two years were less likely to go online for election news; six-year-plus veterans were more than four times as likely.

A Pew Internet & American Life Project report released in December describes a growing audience for online news. Their September 2002 survey shows that 70% of Internet users or about 82 million users -- have gone online for news. Of those, 85% Internet users expect to be able to find ?reliable, up-to-date news? online compared to 43% of non-Internet users.

Of those who say they?ve been online looking for news, 87% say they found what they were looking for. The same survey looked for success rates in finding other kinds of information online; the success rate for news was the highest.

That doesn?t mean online news tops the charts of the way people get their news. On a typical day, the December study reports, about one-fourth of the online population looks for news. By comparison, 59% of Internet users say they look at television news daily.

That study also showed that broadband access to the Internet can make a difference in online news consumption. While about 60% of broadband users say they watch news on TV on that typical day, 43% say they go online for news on a typical day.

The election news results show a significant increase in people going online for depth and detail about candidates. Again, we can?t know how much this has to do with newspapers putting more of their voters? guide content online, sometimes instead of in print. 

Pew also reports about the slight increase in popularity of what the report calls ?online polls? and the questionnaire called ?registering your own opinions by participating in an electronic poll.? But they didn?t ask if they thought the electronic poll was a valid way of gauging opinion or if they used such polls in forming their own opinions.

One interest facet: roughly one-third of the number who reported participating in online chats or discussions in October 1996 did so in 2002 -- 10% now compared to 31% then. Can?t tell you what it means or why that?s the case.  

And that may be why I?m still hungry after being fed this particular survey. Lots of information to nibble on but not enough context to fill me up.

Maybe I expect too much. A single poll can?t answer every question. But isn?t that one of the reasons Pew has devoted so much money and many resources to ongoing studies about the way we use both the Internet and the media? I?ve respected Andrew Kohut?s work with the People & Press project since it began with Times Mirror. The ability to compare years of answers and to mine all that data is invaluable.

They should be able to do a better job of filling in the white space.

Staci D. Kramer is Editor at Large at Cable World and was a contributing editor to Inside.com. Based in University City, Mo., Kramer's clients have included Time, Life, the Detroit Free Press, the Chicago Tribune, The New York Times, Multichannel News, APBNews.com, mediainfo.com, Editor & Publisher, The Sporting News, St. Louis magazine, several major papers in Canada, and numerous others. Her work has been syndicated by the Los Angeles Times Syndicate, reprinted in two books and she has even co-produced a segment for "Nightline."