Looking At The Likes

Four months and one egregiously elitist Shakespeare reference ago, I wrote an article summing up the results of a curious sort-of-study on candidate’s “like” numbers on Facebook – basically, I took candidates’ like numbers from before and after a week and made some superficial observations based on unscientific data.
Nevertheless, four months later, I thought it might be prudent to take another look at the Landscape of Likes to see how candidates are doing. In four months… did looking liking move?
I’d fathom some candidates are rather thrilled with how they’ve done. Others… not so much.

Our starting point last time was June 25, 2011, and we looked at two weeks from then. Now, we’re looking at the full four months from June 25^th to October 25^th.
Cain has gained. But is it noteworthy? Back at the end of June, Herman Cain was bubbling in the lower 100,000 range along with Pawlenty, Gingrich, and Johnson. Now Cain has shot through with about 300,000 likes, which makes sense seeing how he is now a pseudo front“runner” in the GOP’s leisurely stroll towards a nominee. But then again, Bachmann, who used to have a New Hampshire staff, has about 460,000. And she’s polling in count-‘em-in-Kindergarten digits.
Huntsman is still unknown. Four months ago, I would have given Huntsman a pass because his campaign was in the nascent stages, and it would take him time to build recognition and support. Well, he’s surged over 150%, to an impressive… 20,000-ish. Did I mention it’s been four months?
Paul’s is a silent surge. Ron Paul, who was already second in “likes” back in June, is now even more comfortably so, rising almost 40% in four months. Paul’s ideas seem to resonate with a more technologically-savvy group, which can dump almost $3 million on him in five days and knows how to get to his Facebook page without typing “THE FACEBOOK” on Google. But perhaps these numbers, though they provide him with a strong grassroots backbone, don’t quite translate into votes, seeing as he still lags in polls.
Gingrich isn’t trying very hard. Former Speaker Gingrich, the GOP campaign’s resident intellectual (as Romney is in denial about Fair Harvard, Bachmann got her law degree from a place called Oral Roberts, Perry was a C-student in pre-veterinary studies at Texas A&M, Cain finds numbers beyond nine intimidating, and people don’t bother to care that Paul is an actual doctor), seems to be perfectly happy with that title. He is still in the meager 100,000 range and doesn’t look like he is going to even try winning. I guess running for President must be a good thing for book sales.
Was Perry ever a frontrunner? Perry, with around 170,000 likes, is doing about as well as Gingrich and is far behind the rest of the top tier. He has surged by around 160% since June, but he wasn’t a candidate then. Can Mr. “I-make-better-word-salad-than-Palin” Perry last as a candidate, or is he merely a blip in the radar this fall, having already faded to Herman Cain in the polls?
Romney is still in the stratosphere. Now that the Great Mistake of 2008 has finally done vacillating about running, Romney, with over 1.1 million behind him, is the clear frontrunner as far as “likes” go. He even experienced a healthy increase of over 130,000 likes. I guess, well, people like him. The trouble though, is as far as relative rates go, he’s still increasing at a percentage pace more than half as slow as Bachmann. My meager theory is that Romney, like Clinton in 2008, has hit his relative ceiling pretty early, and people will keep looking elsewhere unless they’re out of options. He is also, like Clinton in 2008, debatably the strongest nominee. So let’s see how this works out.
Hope you found the analysis interesting, or at least somewhat amusing. Here’s the unscientific data.
 

 
Data from candidates’ respective Facebook pages. Fan pages and other alternate pages are not included.
Picture of person who should have nothing to do with the 2012 nomination: “Juliet”, painting by Philip Calderon, 1888, via Wikimedia Commons. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Juliet_-_Philip_H._Calderon.jpg