Monday, October 22, 2007
How Real Is The Hype About Ron Paul?
He's been called the Howard Dean of 2008 and there is a lot of hype about Ron Paul's Internet supporters being a force to be reckoned with. But I have to wonder, how real is the hype?
Recently, blogger Anonymous Liberal argued that Ron Paul is not the HD of '08, stating that Dean was a relatively mainstream Democrat, whose popularity with the party's base was proved by his subsequent appointment as DNC chairman, where as Paul is basically a Libertarian posing in an ill fitting GOP suit.
Over on Blog Catalog we have a small but very vocal contingent of Ron Paul supporters, always prepared to spin their candidate in the best possible light. Stoneman suggested some research is in order to answer the question of how real the hype is.
Nothing substantiates buzz like cold hard cash, and according to Open Secrets.org Ron Paul comes up short, ranking 5th among Republican presidential candidates in 3rd Quarter fundraising, with a Q3 total of 5.2 million vs 18 million for Romney, 12 million for Thompson, 11 million for Giuilani and 5.7 million for McCain. In total fundraising the order shakes out a little differently but with Ron Paul still in fifth place-- Romney 62 million, Giuliani 47 million, McCain 32 million, Thompson 12 million and Ron Paul 8 million. (And all of these numbers pale next to the 90 million and 80 million raised by Hillary and Obama respectively.)
Money is important, but it isn't everything, so I also decided to take a look at what kind of buzz the candidates are making in the blogosphere. For this, I turned to Nielsen Media's Blogpulse which provides a measurement of the percentage of All blog posts that mention a particular candidate. This is a Very fuzzy metric, imho since without exhaustive and painstaking analysis there is no way to differentiate from posts that may have mentioned a candidate in passing and posts that are actually About that candidate. Also note that these numbers are Very low because they are a percentage of All blog posts, including the many, many, many blogs that have nothing to do with politics. With those caveats, the numbers are:
Romney 0.113%
Giuliani 0.105%
Thompson 0.064%
McCain 0.0003%
Ron Paul 0.118%
and for comparison
Hillary 0.170%
Obama 0.12%
Note that all of these numbers are for blog posts on October 22, 2007 and the numbers spike up and down a great deal each day so this is only a static snapshot that may not be indicative of any larger trends. But it does appear that on the 22nd at least, Ron Paul was the most blogged about of the Republican candidates.
I'm honestly not sure how much or how little relevance to attach to any of these findings. I also realize that there are many, many other data points that could be examined that might lead to a truer and fuller picture of the state of Paul's campaign. I doubt my Ron Paul supporter friends over on Blog Catalog will be too thrilled that I sum it up-
Ron Paul-- last in money, first in buzz, except for Hillary.
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6 comments:
Hi Alan,
Very interesting post, as usual :) As a statistician, I would argue that the blogpulse data is inconclusive. First: 1 day's data following at GOP debate. Second: Ron, Giuliani, and Romney are all most likely within margin of error of each other. Third: the blogosphere does not represent the the average internet political activist (or does it?) aka primary voters.
The money argument should be looked at more carefully. The debt column, in particular. Romney has lended himself 18 million dollars. He has spent more than he has earned via donations. In fact, only two republicans have more cash on hand minus debt (Thompson 6.4 million, Giuliani 11 million) than Ron Paul's 5.4 million. In this past quarter, only 3 candidates spent less than they earned in donations: Fred Thompson, Ron Paul, Mike Huckabee.
In a time where fiscal responsibility is absolutely paramount to dissolving our 9 trillion dollar-and-growing debt, do real fiscal conservatives want to nominate a candidate unable to control his own campaign spending?
Also check where the donations come from (people, PACs, companies).
I agree with most everything you say here, Cindy. I know that I personally am not average or representative in any way. I watch very little tv, get almost all of my news and information online and spend all my time hanging out with bloggers ;) I tried to put in lots of disclaimers to make clear that I am not claiming anything more than "hey look what I found when I looked this up".
And those numbers from Blogpulse change a Lot day by day. Almost every candidate (except McCain who seems to be completely inviisible in the blogosphere) had days when their number was Much higher than the one I report for Oct 22 and days much lower.
So, really, I'm just saying 'this is what I found when I looked these things up'. And I think it's interesting and maybe something to discuss but I am NOT claiming that it means much.
If you were buying a stock, you wouldn't care about the price so much as the potential for growth.
Ron Paul's fundraising has doubled every quarter. Check his website and see that he's on track for another double this quarter. Moreover, the rate appears to be accelerating.
If his poll numbers -- just now emerging from the margin of error -- grow at the same rate, then he just might pull this thing off.
It is still early, Joe. I very well remember last election, when I was a Deaniac and we had the most money on hand and were 1st in all the polls at this point in the process. I don't specifically disagree with you, but think it is too early to count chickens ;)
I support a lot of what Ron Paul has to say, but I'm not so sure if he'd make a great president. I was a Mitt Romney fan before Dr. Paul came along actually. I first heard Ron Paul speak on Irvin Baxter's radio show "Politics and Religion" and then I watched his segment on Aaron Russo's Freedom to Fascism on Youtube. I wonder if Ron Paul's influence had anything to do with the riots in Georgetown this week.
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