The New Metrics of Campaigns

Polls are as discredited as they should be. So I’m thinking about writing my Guardian column next week about all the new metrics we have to take the pulse of the nation on the Internet. Please help me out with numbers you follow.

None of these is representative or certainly scientific. And many of them can be manipulated–which is just the point of them; they put metrics in the hands of movements that use them to make themselves known: witness Ron Paul’s devoted cult and how they played YouTube like an organ. I speculated after Iowa that one reason for Obama’s success there was the campaign’s ability to organize a critical mass of young supporters in the social services.

The new Internet campaign metrics also let us sense trends that aren’t so manipulable, if we know where to look.

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