And so Republican, Kaiser might have noted. Surveys of Net users suggest a 2-1 Republican advantage over Democrats, with a strong libertarian cast among its users in general. That was only one of the findings from three weeks of sampling the on-line political world. There are, in reality, at least two on-line worlds. The other world is the realm of information and hard data that Washington and the fedpress, in fact, are making available.
Journalists tend to eye the wider, more public world warily.
Andrew J. Glass, the Washington bureau chief for Cox Newspapers, and his bureau mates are on line every day. But even such early adapters of technology as Glass and Kaiser are less eager to talk to strangers. No such doubts furrow the brows of the cyber-hypesters. The presidential candidates' home pages that are already up and running on the Web are an eclectic group of structures, ranging from the kitschy to the cool. The Lugar for President 1996 Web site, for example, considers itself an informational resource in contrast with other pages that ''simply market the candidate,'' according to Mark H. Lugar, Webmaster and a son of the candidate.