Election results from Potemkin

I'm often reminded that Democrats understand social media and use it well. Yes, they're quite good at it:

Although Hillary Clinton boasts a robust 3.6 million Twitter followers, not even a vast right-wing conspiracy would be able to interact with 2 million of them.

According to two popular online measuring tools, no more than 44 per cent of her Twitter fan base consists of real people who are active in using the social media platform.

And at least 15 per cent – more than 544,000 – are completely fake.

StatusPeople.com, the oldest publicly available Twitter-auditing tool, reports that 44 per cent of the former secretary of state's followers are 'good'; 15 per cent are 'fake'; and 41 per cent are 'inactive,' meaning that they never tweet or reply to any tweets.

Why does this matter? Allow John Hayward to explain:

There are all sorts of problems with analysis based on these metrics, beginning with the obvious matter of whether those comments, links, and re-Tweets connote approval. The total buzz level is interesting – an ignored campaign launch is probably worse than one attracting a great deal of negative attention, because the most important thing on Day One is to get noticed – but other than Facebook “likes,” it’s tough to separate positive and negative online chatter, or real people talking from bot-generated traffic mirages.

When someone creates an algorithm that can weed out sarcasm - the stalwart conservative who says “I love Hillary!”, or the liberal activist who declares “Ted Cruz would make a GREAT president!”, as an ironic joke to their friends – then artificial intelligence will have truly arrived.

This is obvious to anyone who thinks about it for even a moment. I don't spend a lot of time on Twitter but my Facebook feed is a pretty good indicator of how the dynamic works. None of my conservative friends have said a word about Michele Bachmann for months, but they don't need to -- every utterance Bachmann might make, along with others she hasn't made, is on my feed because my lefty pals make sure I know about it. I also get regular updates from them about what Ted Nugent is thinking, too. I do appreciate them keeping me informed.

It's possible that the Hillary campaign launch is the start of a great wave of support that will sweep her into office. It's also possible that no one cares what she says. Don't take the breathless reportage too seriously.