Gauging Social Media Enthusiasm

It's hard to oversell the importance of social media in modern politics. Cutting out the middle man and interacting directly with the voters is a new mainstay in campaigns.

So, of the two candidates for Ohio Governor, who is inspiring more enthusiasm?

It's simple to determine, really.

Who has more twitter followers, and how fast are they increasing?

And who has more fans on facebook?

We'll start with Twitter. This graph represents growth in followers of John Kasich and Ted Strickland over the past month.

To be fair, Ted Strickland joined Twitter far after John Kasich. That's why, as of last night, Ted had only 2,807 followers to Kasich's 9,772. But it's the rate of increased followers on Twitter just over the past month that is staggering. In the past 30 days, Strickland has gained only 241 followers. Kasich? 1,075.

What about Facebook? "Fan pages" are popular for politicians. Kasich has 12,457. Strickland, whose facebook page has been around far longer, has 8,168.

These dominating totals say just as much about enthusiasm for Kasich's campaign as it does for the quality of Kasich's social media efforts. The better the social media outreach, the more committed your network of grassroots support becomes, the better your fundraising, and the easier it is to directly communicate your message to the masses.

And Kasich is winning.