What does the campaign look like if Web 2.0 picks the candidates? Ron Paul v. Barack Obama:
Judging by MySpace friends and YouTube channel views, America is preparing for a showdown of Barack Obama (Democrat) and Ron Paul (Republican). Obama’s 169,000 MySpace friends are the most of any candidate, and his 11 million YouTube channel views place him laughably ahead of the competition. Hillary Clinton’s 849,000 channel views is the next closest on YouTube amongst Democratic contenders (her 133,000 MySpace friends presents a closer gap, though). On the Republican side, Ron Paul has 56,000 MySpace friends — about 40% more than the next closest candidate, and his 3.3 million YouTube views make him the only other presidential candidate to pass the million mark.
But in reality, Barack is way behind Hillary and Ron Paul is off the radar. Read/Write Web says there are three reasons for the disconnect:
The first is age. Though youth turnout surged in the 2004 election, older voters still made up the majority at the polls. Of the 125 million or so votes cast, only 20.9 million were from Americans under 30. Because sites like MySpace and YouTube skew younger (and I mean under 50, not under 35), it could be that a lot of the action candidates see on those sites is from people who aren’t likely to actually cast a vote.
The second reason is the cool factor. The candidate du jour you want to buddy up to online isn’t necessarily the one people think is the best for the job. In 2004 a famous whimsical poll found that 57% of voters would rather have a beer with George Bush than challenger John Kerry. But Bush didn’t win 57% of the vote (he won 51% of the popular vote), and those that voted for him likely didn’t do so because they thought he would look better on their MySpace friends list.
The last, and least likely reason, is that the polls themselves are screwed up. Ron Paul’s campaign has alleged that his poor polling numbers are a result of pollsters under counting youth voters who only use cell phones (and have no landline for the pollsters to call). Even if this were the case, it’s unlikely that the 13% of Americans who don’t use a landline would differ in opinion from their traditional phone using brethren enough to swing the polls very much. And as I said in point one: the youth vote — who account for most of that 13% — is a small slice of the election pie.
Ron Paul’s campaign has won a few straw polls, but he came in fifth in Iowa’s. Texas has one coming up soon. I am interested in how he fairs in that one, considering it is his home state. As for Barack, I think his campaign is a fluke. He has shown his inexperience over and over in the past few months. Hillary has the nomination locked up. She brings Bill to the White House, and that has a lot of voters excited. Sadly.
