We knew already that Paulites were abundant on the web, but I would have thought that Obama would be higher. Disclaimer: I support McCain.

I hope they are just noise... But since I'm not an American my thoughts and preference doesn't matter anyways. I just hope they vote better this time.

Noise for sure...

for starters... who the hell is Tom Tancredo?

I don't think it's easily dismissed as just noise:

http://thecaseforronpaul.com/alexa.aspx

That's real web traffic, the problem is knowing the traffic/person ratio.

18900 hits for "will vote for hillary clinton"
7710 hits for "will vote for john edwards"
6780 hits for "will vote for barack obama"
1390 hits for "will vote for hilary clinton"
865 hits for "will vote for mike huckabee"
863 hits for "will vote for ron paul"

I think it's noise. People "google" for many reasons. Because they are looking for a specific page. Because they are looking for answers to something strange. Because they are bored. – the results don't pull any real data – other than the fact that someone is googling it.

Simple as that.

Kucinich FTW http://hs.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=19931777392

You all should see this: http://digg.com/politics/Paradoxes_of_Democracy_Voting_and_Social_Choice

obama-for-president
   315,000

only Paul use full name.

Very good points Roger and Anr – there seems to be a huge impact depending on what phrases you happen to pick. For instance different campaigns seem to focus on different name combinations (just first name/ just last name/ allowing both variants nearly equally/ or mostly using first and last name only).

> People "google" for many reasons. Because they
> are looking for a specific page.

George, note these are not the search popularity trends (like Google Trends) but just the result page count for a phrase search, so that means the overall number of web pages Google indexed which contain this sentence.

Mostly when people talk about political figures in soundbites like 'X for President', they use only the surname.

But if you do this with Ron Paul you end up with an ambiguous term – Paul is also a common first name. So in 'X for President' slogans, Ron Paul's name will always be spelled out in full.

At least, that's what I'm thinking.

Edwards perhaps has quite some residual references from last campaigns left. Internet never forgets.

Noise. I support either Obama or Clinton on the Democrat side (depending on factors like my level of cynicism vs. optimism, practicality vs. risk-taking, and what the weather is like...), and McCain on the Republican side.

You forgot "Colbert for President". Sure, he wasn't allowed on the ballot, but he's number 2 in Google Page Count.

Please read: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Lie_with_Statistics ;)

<<Noise for sure...

for starters... who the hell is Tom Tancredo?>>

You could start paying more attention to primary politics you know...

noise vs signal ??

challenge : care to define either one ??

Noise for sure...

guides8 blog

[Signature removed]

Spammers seem to have a high interest in Ron Paul. There was a Wired article briefly talking about how there were several spam campaigns involving Ron Paul's name.

http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/10/more-on-ron-pau.html

A bit more on the issue.
http://www.technewsworld.com/story/Ron-Paul-Campaign-Swept-Up-in-Botnet-Spam-Scandal-60120.html

I think it is a little skewed being that many of his supporters are Internet people but who knows.

In Raleigh, NC where I live, i've seen more "random" Ron Paul signs (i.e. not official campaign signs or posters) than all other candidates combined. Taking an exit off the interstate the other day, there was a gigantic bedsheet hung between some trees next to the road that was painted with "GOOGLE Ron Paul". Then in random places – on telephone poles, on trees, sides of buildings – i've seen lots of homemade "Ron Paul" signs. I've never seen a homemade Hillary or Obama sign (or even Edwards – this is nearly his hometown). ALL of their signs are the official campaign signs and posters. The Paul supporters are very gung-ho about doing stuff themselves.

And what about Mr. Colbert? :D

^ He was disqualified from running as a "native son" =)

Paul's prevalence is easily attributable to the prevalence of commenters who leave "Ron Paul for President" in their comments on various blogs. But as was pointed out by Anr, people usually don't refer to other candidates by their full names when commenting:

"Barack for President" 568
"Obama for President" 290,000
"Barack Obama for President" 146,000

"Hillary for President" 204,000
"Clinton for President" 355,000
"Hillary Clinton for President" 249,000

"Edwards for President" 349,000
"John Edwards for President" 283,000

"Paul for President" 842,000
"'Ron Paul for President" 804,000

It's also interesting just doing searches of their names:

"Ron Paul" 8,390,000
"Hillary Clinton" 7,300,000
"John Edwards" 6,820,000
"Barack Obama" 3,680,000

And the misspellings of "Barack Obama":
"Barak Obama" 668,000
"Barrack Obama" 160,000
"Barrak Obama" 728

What to make of these numbers? I suspect the greater volume of Clinton and Edwards pages goes to past coverage: they've been around for a while. Paul seems to have a widespread Internet following. I'm surprised that Obama didn't have more hits as he himself has a pretty big Internet following. For instance Digg:
http://www.digg.com/elections/

Ron Paul 8783
Barack Obama 4722
Dennis Kucinich 3815
Mike Gravel 1347
John Edwards 645
...
Hillary Clinton 209

Obviously, digg has a very anti-establishment base, so that's to be expected.

Facebook:

Barack Obama 163,867
Hillary Clinton 52,700
Ron Paul 39,721
John Edwards 23,980

But of course, this is more of a reflection of college age.

site:cnn.com "Hillary Clinton" 24,300
site:cnn.com "Ron Paul" 20,900
site:cnn.com "John Edwards" 17,500
site:cnn.com "Barack Obama" 14,500

News sites might be a big contributing factor.

Eh, it would take a much more complicated breakdown to get to the exact reasons that the numbers come out as they do.

Mike huckabee MUST win... it have the Chuck norris Power!!

http://www.mikehuckabee.com/index.cfm?FuseAction=Blogs.View&Blog_id=724

fluffy for president 982,000

so i gues fluffy will beat them all

Don't forget the 10,100 hits for "nixon for president".

> fluffy for president 982,000
>
> so i gues fluffy will beat them all

(No, because you didn't use quotes...)

Roger Browne, that's interesting. Because I never imagined that quotes as ancient as that still remain.

Then "Clinton for President" are bit skewed too ;)

You missed Stephen Colbert. 1.5 million pages

http://twitter.com/BarackObama

Andrea, you missed the quotes ;)

I think it may be because less people know about Ron Paul and what he stands for. There's not tons of discussion in the "traditional" media about him. (granted I don't pay much attention to the coverage anyway, so much of it is biased anyway, but that's another discussion...) So people are FORCED to search. And if you are going to search... where else?

m2cw...

^ Your logic makes little sense. People are WRITING/TALKING about Ron Paul online not just searching. Google's indexing those webpages...

This isn't a matter of looking at how many times people have searched for a particular phrase, it's looking at how many times "X for President" is mentioned!

Let me do my part :

Ron Paul For President
Paul For President
I Will Vote For Ron Paul
I Will Vote for Paul

Paul does have a great online following due to the fact that information is most easily accessible online. Offline, I personally believe that there is more of a mentality to support whoever you are taught to support.

Clinton and Giuliani both have a huge heads up because of all the Free Advertising they have received.

wow... I could keep going... but I guess I'll stop.... :)

Vote for Ron Paul! ;)

Good point Sohil

This chart shows how many people have actually taken the time to support Ron Paul on their page. NOT how many people search for Ron Paul to find out about him.

How can this just be noise? These are people who are actually in support of Ron Paul and have taken the time to say so.

YOU don't have to like it... BUT I DO.

~Vote for Ron Paul in the 2008 election.~

<<~Vote for Ron Paul in the 2008 election.~>>

First, make sure you are registered republican and vote for him in the primaries. I think if he wins the primaries, he WILL win the election. The only thing holding him back is a lack of awareness...

I'm in for Ron Paul too. :)