Swing State Site Traffic: How Obama and Romney Did in July

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President Barack Obama and his Republican challenger Mitt Romney are battling for votes in Virginia and several other swing states in play this election. In July, the candidates were at a near tie in Virginia - when it comes to campaign site visitors, that is.

According to data from Hitwise provided exclusively to ClickZ, online users from Virginia were around 1.65 times as likely compared to the average American online user to visit either the official Obama or Romney campaign sites in July.

Despite that near-dead heat in Virginia, each candidate did show strengths in specific swing states last month. People in Nevada, for instance, were more than two times as likely to visit Romney's site in July while they were 1.5 times as likely to check out the Obama site. Of the two campaign sites, Romney's site representation in Nevada was highest among 12 swing states analyzed. Representation measures the concentration of site traffic vs. the online population.

Overall, people in six swing states - Nevada, New Hampshire, Colorado, New Mexico, Florida, and Ohio - were more likely to visit the Romney site in July than Obama's. People in five swing states were more likely to be on Obama's site: Iowa, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Indiana.

The six states where people are more likely to visit Romney's site have a total of 72 electoral votes. Obama's five have 61.

The numbers could be telling in that site traffic indicates that people are visiting a site to learn more about a candidate, and possibly sign up to receive emails or volunteer, or donate money. Generating a strong voter base that can be activated to volunteer to get out the vote on election day is key in these must-win states.