I am not taking sides. I am just wondering.
While we are talking below about social media, does it mean anything that Barack Obama has over 500,000 members in his Facebook group and Hillary Clinton has just over 110,000?
John McCain, by the way, has 58,000.
Something this weekend (Frank Rich's Sunday NYTimes piece? NPR?) made quite an issue of this. It pointed out that Hillary had a scripted "town meeting" on the Hallmark channel (purchased TV time) that nobody attended, at great cost, while Obama backers have a Yes We Can video that's had 3.5 million views... "Cost to the Obama campaign? Zero."
ReplyDeleteMy guess is that Obama is strongly backed by the Facebook generation (age-wise), not to mention the Facebook personality demographic, which bears almost zero resemblance to the McCain demographic. IOW, the stats you cite might be a matter of selection bias, not overall strength.
Or so I'd guess.
I think you’d have to go over to MySpace to find more republican support. It is owned by Murdoch’s News Corp...
ReplyDeleteI don't think so, since the FaceBook demographic is highly skewed towards youthful, and therefore (unfortunately) inconsistent voters.
ReplyDeleteSo it means that Obama is more popular than Clinton or McCain with high school and college kids (not that there aren't people of all ages on facebook, but that's where the weight of the membership still is) but I don't think that's necessarily relevant for the outcome of the campaign.
By the way, if you haven't seen them, you might be interested in http://www.electoral-vote.com/ and http://election.loquacious.org/2008-presidential-primary/
I agree with above. I don't know any adults who are on facebook or my space but if you are under 25 it is your lifeline. Obama appeals to the younger voter for sure. He is young and charismatic! Hillary is brilliant! How wonderful we have such good choices.
ReplyDeleteIf Hillary was "brilliant' her campaign wouldn't be on the ropes...
ReplyDelete