Analysis: Is Ron Paul Internet Buzz Real or Spam?
Rush Limbaugh, Digg Community Question Support
Rush Limbaugh says it's the latter. On his May 16 show, Mr. Limbaugh stated the following when discussing Ron Paul's campaign for president: "Here's what's happening out there, folks. Ron Paul has a lot of supporters. He's got supporters, and they are spamming polls on the Internet ... I'm just going to be honest with you. I don't think Congressman Paul has a snowball's chance." In particular, Mr. Limbaugh said that Dr. Paul's statements on the Iraq War and 9/11, from which some inferred that the United States invited these attacks, would keep him from making a run at the 2008 Republican nomination.
Matt Margolis of GOP Bloggers, an "online grassroots community with the goal of keeping a Republican majority in Congress, and a Republican President in the White House," agrees. Mr. Margolis runs a GOP 2008 Straw Poll and says that Ron Paul supporters are indeed spamming in order to further Dr. Paul's campaign. In a May 30, 2007 posting entitled "Manufacturing Support," Mr. Margolis states that he was hesitant to add Dr. Paul to his poll, but did so in an attempt to determine Dr. Paul's popularity. Mr. Margolis states that before spammers become involved, Dr. Paul received 4% of his poll's votes. However, Mr. Margolis states that once spammers started voting, Dr. Paul moved up to 46.4% of all votes received.
National polls support Mr. Margolis' claims. A May 6 CNN poll reports that Dr. Paul is supported by only 1% of Republicans and a May 7 USA Today poll reports that only 2% of Republicans supported Ron Paul at that time. Note that Dr. Paul did not announce his candidacy until March 12, well often many of his opponents, and at the time of the polls, many media outlets did not offer his name as a choice for Republican nominee.
The digg.com community has repeatedly discussed this issue in numerous threads, with some users saying that they will automatically bury any article which discusses Dr. Paul's candidacy. One user, Ryan Gardner, has gone so far as to start a petition titled "Stop the Ron Paul Spam on Digg," asking all digg users to bury any Ron Paul story on the popular social networking website (incidentally, this petition has yet to have any signatures).
The jury is still out on whether the Ron Paul internet buzz is real or the product of internet spammers. My very unofficial poll says that the Ron Paul internet buzz is real, even if some of the online polls are being tampered with by spammers. I wrote an article regarding Ron Paul on May 30 (Presidential Candidate Ron Paul Gains Popularity on the Internet) which received almost 50 diggs within 6 hours (and was buried shortly thereafter). The article was also picked up by the conservative website FreeRepublic.com with almost 180 comments and over 1300 views. My articles rarely receive this type of response, so I decided to look at the profiles of those who dugg the article. It turns out most of the users who dugg the article have been around digg for quite some time and have dugg all sorts of articles, not just pieces about Ron Paul. I did see a few profiles for relatively new digg users who may or may not be spammers, but otherwise the Ron Paul internet buzz seems to be about real discussion regarding the candidate's positives and negatives.
Link to transcript from Rush Limbaugh's May 16 show:
http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_051607/content/01125110.guest.html
Link to "Manufacturing Support":
http://www.gopbloggers.org/mt/archives/004907.php
Link to "Stop the Ron Paul Spam on Digg" petition:
http://www.petitionspot.com/petitions/buryronpaul
Link to May 6 CNN poll:
http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/candidates/
Link to May 7 USA Today poll:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/polls/tables/live/2007-05-07-poll.htm
Link to Free Republic discussion:
http://freerepublic.info/focus/f-backroom/1842327/posts
Published by C.M. Paulson
C.M. Paulson is a versatile writer and analyst with extensive business experience working for 2 Fortune 100 companies. View profile
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78 Comments
Post a CommentRon Paul has not lost anything. The point of this whole movement is to EDUCATE Americans about what is being done by our government. Most simply do not know....that the Federal Reserve is a private, for-profit bank and not a government agency......that our American paper money is backed by NOTHING of value....the national economic process is a giant Ponzi scheme which is inevitably going to self-destruct....that the existence of the IRS and the incomce tax is unconstitutional and illegal........and so many more issues can be added to the list. Dr. Paul is finally communicating to the American people in common sense terms instead of convoluted political rhetoric that we have been dumbed down by, and people are listening. It would be wonderful to have him in the White House, and maybe in 2012 we will. But in the meantime, Dr. Paul has been tremendously successful in the REAL campaign - to wake the citizenry of the US up to the corruption that is slowing bleeding us of our liberty a
That comment by Ron Paul on foreign policy in the Middle East, leading up to 9/11, has a lot of honest truth, but most Americans don't want to hear it. I think that was what killed his campaign. Politicians win based on giving great speeches in what people really want to hear, and know how to say the right things to make people feel good about themselves. Whenever you make someone feel really safe and secure, they will give all their trust, and eventually their own liberty and freedom away without questioning anything. Thats what it actually means to be a real politician. Ron Paul has more of a presentation of a college professor than politician.
It doesn't matter if it is spam or not. Are other candidates hopefuls spamming for them? No... Weather the phenomena is real or false, there are a lot of people who really think this guy's cool. The guy is just smart and everyone knows it.
To David.... "Scientific Poll"??? You obviously have no idea how most political polling works. You can generate the results you want, in fact, it's what pollsters are paid to do.
http://www.google.com/trends?q=Mitt+Romney%2CJohn+McCain%2CMike+Huckabee%2CRudy+Giuliani%2C+Ron+Paul&ctab=0&geo=US&geor=usa.ia&date=ytd&sort=4
http://www.google.com/trends?q=Mitt+Romney%2CJohn+McCain%2CMike+Huckabee%2CRudy+Giuliani%2C+Ron+Paul&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0
The spammers are so tricky they are fooling googles stats too. 6 million in a day, average donation $50. lol
Ron Paul is the real deal. The Top goole trends link is for Iowa, the bottom the whole US. See the search volume. This is not a poll. It is how much the person is searched for. He also beats out the democrats too.
Lets look at web site traffic.
http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details/elfyourself.com?site0=ronpaul2008.com&site1=hillaryclinton.com&site2=barackobama.com&site3=mikehuckabee.com&site4=mittromney.com&y=p&z=2&h=300&w=610&range=6m&size=Medium
OMG they are so bad they are spamming his site too. I offer evidence the numbers are real. Though who say the polls were spame
If "the polls" showed Rush's candidate of choice as being popular he wouldn't question the polls... it is only when someone unexpected begins breaking the political mold of hypocrisy that the professionals get worried. Rush is playing "the game" as he has been all along, it is his job. If reform happened, Rush would have nothing to do anymore, he thrives on government corruption.
NO. It's only me alone that wants freedom and liberty. The rest are ALL spammers. Wake up America! Ron Paul is for real and so are his supporters!
Lets proof it with a great TEA PARTY 12/16/07!
I am an immigrant from eastern europe and it`s been some time that I feel to go back home, eventough I am american citizen.
The reason is, I feel that I live in some country called fucktapistan, seeing this crapy politicians ruining this place.
Discovering Ron Paul, I`m reconcidering my decision. I like this TRULY american spirit this guy have. This is actuely tipe of personality I concider nice, honest,patriotic and hard working american people.
Check out my stuff on ron paul
Haha, it doesn't take a genious to see that a *huge* portion of Ron Paul's popularity on the net is artificially generated. Do a google search for "Hillary Clinton": 6.6 million results. Do a google search for "Ron Paul": 8.4 million results. Are you telling me that Ron Paul is more popular with Republicans than Hillary Clinton is with Democrats? Not one single scientific poll puts Ron Paul with more than 5% of the Republican vote. And yet practically every single non-scientific poll on the net is mysteriously won by Paul. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to get past the "one vote per computer" crap that some of you are using to defend the legitimacy of Paul's internet hype. The only way that internet sites can identify which computer is which is the IP address, which is EASILY hidden/changed, many times PER SECOND if you really wanted to. There are even easy ways to send text messages from "virtual" phones online, as was the case with the debate results on FOX. All of it can be easi