I find it fascinating to watch how MySpace has become mainstream America. The aging demographics is one thing, but when candidates with presidential aspirations have MySpace pages then you know that MySpace is no longer the domain of the under 17 crowd.
Fully thirteen months before the first primary and already most of the serious presidential candidates have their MySpace site up and running. I thought it would be interesting to look at the number of MySpace friends a candidate has, and see if that popularity carries over the voting preference.
My assumption is that a MySpace friend might be a better proxy for how widespread a candidates support is, instead of how well they are polling in Iowa and New Hampshire. So who is winning the MySpace friends battle?
For the Republican’s, John McCain is the clear front runner with 993 friends, Rudy Guiliani is a distant second with 408 friends and Mitt Romney is even further back with 164 friends.
A Washington Post national poll this past weekend had Rudy Giuliani leading John McCain by 34% to 27% with Mitt Romney at 9%.
The Democratic candidates are much more engaged on MySpace than their Republican counterparts. The unnoffcial Barack Obama site has 22,542 friends as the ground support for this candidacy grows. Hillary Clinton is second with 16,826 friends and John Edwards is third with 8,996 friends. Bill Richardson is a distant fourth with 318 friends.
The same Washington Post national poll has Hillary Clinton far ahead of the field with 41% support, compared to Barack Obama’s 17% and John Edwards 11%.
I find it interesting that the MySpace and Washington Post numbers are so different. As the campaigns progress I will be keeping track of the number of MySpace friends that the major candidates have to see if it is proxy for how well they are doing with voters.
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Garrett 01.25.07 at 3:53 pm
The $1 question is are any of these profiles actual “real” (I hope not). I don’t think Hillary’s advisors would recommend devoting a huge chunk of her page to Cafepress trinkets. It’s also funny how the Giuliani page stresses that he wants to meet military, police, & firefighters…what about the rest of America? :p
nate 01.25.07 at 4:21 pm
Although interesting, we should definitely remember there is a demographic who is engaged with myspace, and a whole lot of people who are not (by choice or otherwise).
However, tt’s a very interesting stat, and worth considering more for the demographics than for the actual % of people who are ‘friending’ a particular candidate.
Web Proxy 09.25.07 at 8:40 pm
I really dont understand why companies, schools, governments think they have the right to dicate what people do online, its essentially censorship and its wrong.