Poll numbers are hard to come by for the B.J. Lawson (R) versus David Price (D) congressional race, but Price is widely considered a safe bet. He’s served since 1987 (minus two years when he lost during the 1994 Republican Revolution) representing a heavily Democratic 4th district.
Even a Lawson internal poll shows him down big, 56 percent to 31 percent.
But an even more uneven battle is in social media. Lawson 1, Price 0.
Lawson has a Web site rich with multimedia content and a conspicuous plate of links to social networking tools. (See right).
His videos are frequently updated with eye-catching headlines and still-frames. He’s accessible on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and LinkedIn, the top trendy social networking sites.
It seems to have paid off. As of Ot. 1, he has 563 supporters on Facebook, 500 friends on MySpace and 41 followers on Twitter.
Price has also made posted some video, but the last one was in May, and they just beg readers to skip over them. (See right)
Price has made one forays into social media, but has made no effort to promote it on his Web site. Still, he has 629 supporters on Facebook. Who knows how many he would have if he tried?
We’ll see how these efforts translate into young voter results come November.
You need to give that poll another read, my friend. You failed to go into the specifics of the poll metrics.
The campaign sample had 57% Democrats, 26% Republicans, and 17% Unaffiliateds. The actual demographics of the registration in the district are 46% Democrats, 28% Republicans, and 26% Unaffiliateds. This very closely matches the typical makeup of the voter turnout in the district, and I think it’s a safe bet that Democrats will not compose more than half of the voter turnout on election day. Furthermore, the sample was stratified by precinct, making it a very well-designed poll.
The campaign gave David Price a huge boost in representation from his base in the poll that is far higher than what the percentage of the vote comprised by Democrats will be on election day, while they slightly cut the Republican representation and massively cut the Unaffiliated representation (among which, surely, Lawson would have gotten a significant portion). And yet, in this poll, with a big boost to his base, he’s running 9-10 points BEHIND what he typically gets in the district, and also one point behind the total percentage of the sample represented by Democrats. There’s also a very high proportion of undecideds.
When you consider all of this, it’s bad news for David Price, as the poll was basically designed for a huge result on his part. If the poll used a sample that more closely resembled the demographics of the district, the race would be much, much closer, perhaps within ten points.
As of 10/7, BJ’s doing much better than that on Facebook:
http://www.new.facebook.com/pages/William-BJ-Lawson/6452597261
He has 720 supporters. Price has 630… and a cursory review of Price’s supporters suggest that many are far too young, hip, and educated concerning the real issues facing our country that they’re probably actually Lawson supporters just keeping on eye on things in the Establishment.
This is the year for change.
[...] previous post has been written about the David Price v. B.J. Lawson race. Lawson also has a Twitter, with similar [...]