Wednesday, June 2, 2010

Is Ed Martin's Internet Support Illusory?

One of the things driving the local conventional wisdom that Ed Martin is running a tough congressional campaign is his apparent support on the internet. Martin has over 3,000 facebook fans and over 3,000 Twitter followers, which would seem to suggest that he has substantial online support. However, as many are well aware, online support does not necessarily translate to actual votes, so it's interesting to see how effectively Martin's network can be used to get actual results.

If anything is an easy measure of online support, an online poll would have to be at the top of the list. However, as documented by FiredUp Missouri, despite the fact that Ed Martin heavily promoted an online poll by the Missouri Sovereignty Project on Twitter and Facebook, he was crushed by Republican Primary challanger John Wayne Tucker in the poll results announced yesterday.

In fact, Martin's 3,000+ Facebook supporters and 3,000+ Twitter followers only amounted to 99 votes "in district" and 61 votes outside of the district. If Martin's "online support" can only generate 160 mouse clicks, can it really be expected to bring people to the polls in the 3rd district to vote for a former Matt Blunt Chief of Staff?

3 comments:

  1. I can't wait to see how they twist these results! They are fairly creative sometimes.

    At least when they're not outright lying.

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  2. Russ, I'm pretty sure this will fall into the "ignore at all costs" category for Ed and the St. Louis Tea Party.

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  3. This is Hilarious! He supposedly has all this backing and can't even win an online poll. After looking at Tucker's site, this is the year many underdogs are putting GOP picks on the sidelines and Martin could be one of them. Let's hope!

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