If you believe the polling information available here here then it appears as if John McCain has become THE Republican frontrunner, a shoe-in for the nomination.
On the Democratic side, you'll hear the story that Hillary is out front - Allthough things are less clear.
But as we saw on the Democratic side, polls are not always the final say - In fact, there are many storys of the bias inherent in polling. When polls clearly predict a winner and are wrong, then this evidence supports the allegations of bias in polling.
What if there were a way to gauge a politicians support and REMOVE the bias of polls? You would then get an un-biased, empirical snap-shot of true support for a candidate. This is almost impossible since ALL polls are conducted by people who have inherent bias. People who are Democrat or Republican - Who are Pro one candidate or another.
Enter Alexa No - I'm not talking about Billy Joel's daughter - I'm talking about a RATING system. It rates ALL web pages on the planet based on actual page visits.
So if you go to Alexa and type in the domain name for the top 4 Candidates, you will see whether or not their web sites correspond in popularity.
They SHOULD, right? At the very least, you should get a crystal clear snapshot of WHO has the most energized following - The kind of people who are going to go daily and click on say Mitt Romneys page, are the kind of folks who are going to actually get OFF of their asses and vote for him, right?
I think so.
So here you have an ubiased and transparent way to see who is the most popular with the people, for real - without the influence of the pollsters and their agenda.
This of course raises the question - If the Alexa rating is different from the actual outcome of the election - Is there anything amiss with the election process or the polling process? Does the polling process become a self-fullfilling prophecy?
(or is it even darker, as some have suggested - see Hacking Democracy )
I'll let you sort that out for yourself - But the results of my little Alexa test, are interesting to say the least.
Now Remember that the SMALLER an Alexa Rating, the MORE web traffic the site gets. I looked at the most obvious choice, the domain name for each of the 4 major candidates running. (Sorry Mike - I think you're really funny - maybe next time).
The Candidates current position if you believe the polls:
Hillary Clinton
Barack Obama
John McCain
Mitt Romney
So what's going on here? Is Barack destined to become the next president? If this happens, remember you heard it here first. But WHAT'S UP WITH THIS??? John McCain, supposedly the only clear front runner, is DEAD LAST?
It really cheeses me off that there is yet MORE proof that there is something stinky going on with regards to the electoral process. If you haven't seen "Hacking Democracy" check out the link above.
I really hope that the process if fair and balanced - but my cynical side says no - That there is NO way in hell that real outsiders like Mitt or Barack (who may be on his way to becoming an insider) can get in the white house.
In any event, it's highly suspicious to me that in BOTH cases - Democratic and Republican, the poll leaders are clearly NOT the ones with the most energized bass. This is pretty hard to dispute based on the whispers of Alexa.
