Deleted
Deleted Member
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Post by Deleted on Nov 6, 2007 18:19:07 GMT -5
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Post by hawk on Nov 8, 2007 1:07:48 GMT -5
Oh, poo. You're not going to revolt. You'll keep rolling over and letting Uncle Sam tickle your tummy.
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Post by ranman7 on Nov 8, 2007 1:48:51 GMT -5
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Post by ranman77007 on Nov 9, 2007 16:46:51 GMT -5
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Post by calmrainydaze on Nov 11, 2007 7:28:05 GMT -5
Hello...the Internet IS Mainstream
Why isn't Ron Paul making a better showing in those conventional "scientific" polls? Well it would help if he were included in them to begin with.
An LA Times/Bloomberg Poll from June 11, which is currently being cited by many news sources, deliberately excluded Ron Paul from the questions that were posed to Republican and independent voters surveyed.
The poll questions asked are available here. For example:
If the Republican primary or caucus for president were being held in your state today and the candidates were Kansas Senator Sam Brownback, former House Majority Leader Newt Gingrich, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, California Congressman Duncan Hunter, Arizona Senator John McCain, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, Colorado Congressman Tom Tancredo, former governor of Wisconsin Tommy Thompson, and former Tennessee Senator and actor Fred Thompson, for whom would you vote?
What makes this snubbing so egregious is that several candidates with little or no traction—Brownback, Tancredo, Huckabee, Hunter, Tommy Thompson—were included in the poll questions despite the fact that their support on the Internet is virtually nonexistent, at least comparatively speaking.
It's interesting to hear various media outlets talk dismissively about a candidate's Internet support, as if the only people active on the Internet are young, technology-rabid, anti-authority hipsters. This isn't 1995! The social integration and impact of the Internet has changed dramatically, even since the last election. A person would be hard pressed to find many others today, especially those who actually vote in elections, who are not spending a substantial amount of time on the Internet—either at home or at work, or both. Even a great number of the over-60 demographic are using it. So whenever I hear talk of this juxtaposition of "Mainstream Media" vs. "The Internet", I just have to shake my head.
The Internet IS mainstream.
A recent study shows that Internet penetration in U.S. has reached 73% of the adult population; roughly 147 million adults. Another found that 45% of Internet users, or about 60 million Americans, rely on the Internet as a source of information to help them make important decisions in their life. The significance of the Internet is universally recognized by all the presidential candidates now running, as is made abundantly clear by their strenuous efforts to use it to their advantage. Research reveals that more and more voters are getting their political information from the Internet.
So I have to wonder when some pundit or media outlet tries to marginalize Ron Paul's campaign by insinuating that "Internet support" means a small but aggressive clique that doesn't accurately represent the majority of the American populace. I daresay the traditional methods of polling are becoming less and less relevant every day. I certainly think the data gleaned from the Web provides a much more representative picture than traditional polling methods of phone calls to homes with land lines at a particular time on a weekday. I also wonder, when 55% of the adult population doesn't vote at all, how random phone calls can possibly generate a truer picture of any candidate's chances compared to a sample of highly active Internet users who are all sure to be active voters. It doesn't add up.
Ron Paul has about 12,000 MeetUp group members, three times as many as the next most-popular MeetUp candidate, Barack Obama. One of the Ron Paul groups on Facebook, a social networking site popular with students, also has a membership count of slightly over 12,000. His YouTube videos are the most subscribed-to and most viewed by a wide margin. He's the most searched-for candidate in the blogosphere. There are dozens upon dozens of blogs dedicated to him (he effectively has a whole bunch of campaign staffs working for him instead of just one), and hundreds—if not thousands—that are posting articles about him every day.
The support for Ron Paul is real, it is mainstream, and it continues to grow at a breakneck pace. Chances are, the pollsters and the media outlets that are excluding him now are in for a rude awakening.
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