Dr. Ron Paul Represents the New 2.0 candidate
Posted by Duane Lester on Sep 13th, 2007 • 525 Clicks

There is no refuting the assertion that Dr. Ron Paul is the internet’s candidate. There are more and more groups popping up all over the web, dedicated to the candidacy. Ron Paul is truly the best Web 2.0 candidate:

ron-paul2.jpg The Web does reveal how involved U.S. Internet users are with a candidate’s Web 2.0 presence, and again Ron Paul comes out on top. If we look at the traffic flowing from websites like MySpace, Facebook and YouTube, the candidate with the most visits from those sites is Ron Paul, followed by Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. But if Ron Paul tops all of the Web metrics for popularity, like searches and traffic from social networks, then how can he be so far down in the Gallup Poll?

The answer may be in the difference between the people who answer a pollster’s phone call and the people who don’t. Younger adults are abandoning their landline phones for cell phones, so including this demographic in phone-based polls seems unlikely. And visitors to Ron Paul’s official website ronpaul2008.com are likely to be male (74%) and between 25 and 34 years old (25%). On the other hand, a significant portion of visitors to the websites of both the Republican and Democratic frontrunners are 55 or older. Of those two demographics, which is most likely to participate in a phone poll on their favorite candidate?

Despite his success on the Web, the gap between Paul’s poll standing and online popularity highlights a bigger problem for the doctor from Texas. Can his wired supporters take a break from shout-outs, sending virtual drinks and writing on virtual walls to shut down their computers and go out and vote?

I hope so. This isn’t because I am 100% behind Ron Paul. As I have said before, I have some reservation on his position on the War in Iraq. I agree with him on bringing all the troops home and by all I mean ALL. Bring home the troops from Japan and South Korea and Germany. But I think we need to finish what we started in Iraq.

However, if the young Ron Paul supporters do get out and vote, it would show an increase in political awareness and that would be a beautiful thing, considering who they are voting for.

And, I would love to see him get to the White House and really start changing things in Washington.

In a related video from YouTube, Dr. No gives his thoughts on the internet:
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    Duane Lester is an ex-Navy journalist turned blogger and podcaster. He is the lead writer and editor for All American Blogger. You can also find him on StumbleUpon, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Blog Talk Radio and Newsvine. You can contact him by clicking the "E-mail this Author" button below.
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