Probably the most exciting development of the elections this year has been the social media obsessions that have spread so quickly to young and old alike.

FaceBook users have been especially vocal this year in regard to political issues. Since Palin was chosen to run with John McCain FaceBook users have generated over 500 groups pertaining to her candidacy, either for or against it. I was curious to see how the groups would match up in a side-by-side comparison of anti-Palin and pro-Palin groups; the results were rather surprising.

Obviously this isn’t the most scientific research effort, but the results are far more revealing than I had anticipated. I’ve provided a summary of the results below, followed by a discussion of some of the caveats in these numbers, and how this was not a scientific endeavor but more of amusement to fill a curiosity (i.e., a burning desire to see how many other FaceBook users felt the same way about Palin as I do). At the bottom of this article I have provided a listing of each group (linked to the website location) and the group membership numbers for each as of September 20, 2008.

Summary

Total membership numbers for each category:

Anti-Palin – 440,049

Pro-Palin – 96,422

Most groups:

Anti-palin groups = 61

Pro-Palin groups = 37

Largest group strength from either category:

I have more Foreign Policy Experience than Sarah Palin - 121,946 members.

Sarah Palin for Vice President (1 million strong) – 31,202

About the Results

I actually came across this idea from a website I found while browsing the Internet. I ran across a blog entitled Approximately as many people as Wasilla.

The site indicates: “When Sarah Palin was mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, there were approximately 6,000 people living in the town. Here are some other things with approximately 6,000 people.”

Of course being the complete Palin fan that I am, I had to read through the list of items. Dedicated to all things “with approximately 6,000 people or more”, I was soon thrilled to learn that there was a FaceBook group entitled “A vote for Sarah is NOT a vote for women’s rights” with over 5,500 members as of the 17th of September.

Well that was all it took for me, I had to find out more. Once I reached the group pages and searched for Sarah Palin, however, I was shocked to realize that there were over 500 groups pertaining to Sarah Palin! Some of them were just plain stupid or ignorant meanness or both, but many of them appeared to be serious expressions of political choice.

I soon realized that I wasn’t going to be able to go through each and every one of these, but I wanted to do some type of comparison, between the anti-Palin groups and the pro-Palin ones. What I ended up with is posted below. Basically I went through the first 10 pages of results and listed every group no matter how offensive. Then, I went through and any group with cuss words (there were at least 6 in the anti category and a couple of references to sex in the pro category) was deleted and replaced with the very next pro or anti group option on the subsequent page.

What I was interested in doing was getting an idea not only of the number of members total from each side of this issue, but also the relative strength of each. Strength can be considered by total membership of all groups for each side, which group has the largest membership total independent of the others, and which side has more groups.

Now one thing to keep in mind is that FaceBook account holders can join any number of these groups, so some of the numbers will be essentially duplicated. However, the strength of the anti-Palin numbers in all three respects made it a pretty easy landslide in this case, not to mention the largest anti-Palin group was approximately four times larger than the pro-Palin group, where each account can only be included once for each.

Finally, I realize that this is not at all a scientific effort. While it is an indication of support for or against the Palin candidacy, it cannot come close to representing any segment of the population at large, let alone voters. Some groups were started by individuals outside the United States, and while many appeared to be female members it is most likely there were many joins from account holders not old enough to vote.

Overall though it was an interesting study on a candidacy that has created quite a bit of controversy in this country. Given that the anti-Palin membership numbers are nearly four times those of the pro-Palin one’s, and the strength of the anti-Palin’s largest group is four times as large, plus there are three times as many anti-Palin groups as pro-Palin, it seems to me that perhaps women are paying more attention to this than I had anticipated.

If these numbers are any indication at all, it seems that the “support” for the Palin candidacy has been wildly blown out of proportion, and in fact I believe that will show through come election day. Whew! God Bless America indeed!

My Group Survey Numbers

FaceBook Palin Groups case study results, or, download the excel sheet which includes links to all the groups (.zip file).