Saturday, October 18, 2008

For the generation that made "friend" a verb...

Once again, the WSJ always has interesting, interactive graphs. This one took me a minute to figure out because the data is pretty comprehensive.

Also, in a very meta and self-aware article, the WSJ takes a look at how the first "Internet Election" has changed the face of the campaign:

"Sen. Obama's victory in Iowa, the first contest, shocked pundits and turned the Democratic race upside down. "If people had been taking Obama's Facebook numbers more seriously, they would not have been so surprised when he won the Iowa caucus," says Ms. Williams.

She found that candidates with the most Facebook supporters and blog mentions before the caucuses -- Sen. Obama topped the list -- won the most votes. That correlation with votes was much higher than for more-traditional gauges like polling, fund-raising and media attention, her study showed. In primaries, which require less of a grassroots effort, more-traditional measures foretold the winners."


The internet and Facebook specifically have changed the way (at least young to middle-age) Americans get their news and election data, as well as show support for a candidate. But what implications does that have for this and subsequent elections?

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