Tracking candidate popularity by MySpace friend numbers
techPresident is having some fun with non-scientific methodologies: they’re comparing 2008 presidential candidates using the metric of how many friends their profiles have on MySpace. Here are the numbers:
Democrats
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Republicans
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Notice how many more friends the Democratic candidates have versus the Republican candidates. It’s not even remotely close. The possible reasons include:
- Young people are generally more liberal/progressive than old farts and they get involved in social networking a lot more.
- Bush makes it embarrassing to be MySpace friends with any Republican.
- Republicans don’t know how to use computers.
I’m placing my bets on 1., but 2. might have something to do with it and 3. wouldn’t surprise me.
March 2nd, 2007 at 03:12
You didn’t consider:
4. People that spend a great deal of time on MySpace my not be well informed or likely to vote, and well-informed people likely to vote may not spend a great deal of time on MySpace, so the results may represent a meaningless sampling of views.
Just a thought… :-)
March 2nd, 2007 at 09:59
I’m not sure about all of that, but you do have a good point about people not being likely to vote (which is very unfortunate). I haven’t missed an election yet, and I don’t ever foresee myself missing one, but some of my friends, who are also 21, have never even voted.