We’ve been looking at sales statistics for items supporting the 2008 presidential contenders since way back in 2004, but lately we’ve started looking at indicators of traffic to campaign websites, Google News mentions, and even a google idiot index.
Then there is the number of MySpace friends brandished by each candidate on that flashy, seizure-inducing internet behemoth. To whom do social networkers pledge their political allegiance? Here are the MySpace rankings for candidates of each party (and no party) bridging two dates, starting on October 3, 2007 and ending up on October 13, 2007:
| 10/3/2007 | 10/13/2007 | Change | |
| Democrats | |||
| Barack Obama: | 179,426 friends | 181,568 friends | (2,142 new friends) |
| Hillary Clinton: | 56,651 friends | 56,992 friends | (341 new friends) |
| John Edwards: | 48,044 friends | 48,657 friends | (613 new friends) |
| Dennis Kucinich: | 31,956 friends | 32,368 friends | (412 new friends) |
| Bill Richardson: | 20,437 friends | 20,575 friends | (138 new friends) |
| Joseph Biden: | 14,267 friends | 14,494 friends | (227 new friends) |
| Mike Gravel: | 10,233 friends | 10,460 friends | (227 new friends) |
| Christopher Dodd: | 8,710 friends | 8,836 friends | (126 new friends) |
| Independents | |||
| Orion Karl Daley: | no myspace page | no myspace page | (no new friends) |
| Kelcey Wilson: | 67 friends | 71 friends | (4 new friends) |
| Greens | |||
| Jared Ball: | 34 friends | 31 friends | (3 fewer friends) |
| Jerry Kann: | no myspace page | no myspace page | (no new friends) |
| Kent Mesplay: | no myspace page | 1 | (1 new friend) |
| Joe Schriner: | no myspace page | no myspace page | (no new friends) |
| kat swift: | 119 friends | 127 friends | (8 new friends) |
| Republicans | |||
| Ron Paul: | 66,495 friends | 69,642 friends | (3,147 new friends) |
| John McCain: | 39,166 friends | 39,113 friends | (53 fewer friends) |
| Mitt Romney: | 30,777 friends | 30,960 friends | (183 new friends) |
| Sam Brownback: | 10,906 friends | 11,122 friends | (216 new friends) |
| Fred Thompson: | 10,787 friends | 11,267 friends | (480 new friends) |
| Rudolph Giuliani: | 8,364 friends | 8,442 friends | (78 new friends) |
| Mike Huckabee: | 7,487 friends | 7,831 friends | (344 new friends) |
| Duncan Hunter: | 6,741 friends | 6,806 friends | (65 new friends) |
| Tom Tancredo: | 4,014 friends | 4,025 friends | (11 new friends) |
| Alan Keyes: | 270 friends | 266 friends | (4 fewer friends) |
The story told by these statistics is pretty straightforward: Barack Obama and Ron Paul, who have the most popular presences on Myspace, have also been the quickest to gain new friends. There’s a second tier of those trending upward at a moderate pace — John Edwards, Dennis Kucinich, Fred Thompson, Mike Huckabee, Hillary Clinton — although their rate of growth is nothing to crow about. Everybody else has been stagnant, and even (Alan Keyes, John McCain, Jared Ball) losing ground.
We’ll take a look at the MySpace pages again after another week or two to see who’s trending up and down. And maybe, depending on events, we’ll add Al Gore to the list.
