Head Tale

I wrote a lot about what the number of Facebook friends may or may not mean in a political race during the NDP leadership campaign last year. 

I'm not sure what if anything these same numbers might mean for a more local race like the one that's currently happening in Regina – Coronation Park.  But I do sincerely believe that politics has permanently changed in the new media landscape so you can't ignore these types of outlets – blogs, web sites, Facebook, Twitter, etc – both as a way to reach people and also as an indicator of support and trends within a race. 

Knowing that, I thought it might be interesting to see how the various Coronation Park candidates' numbers changed coming out of last weekend's NDP convention.  Although the majority of people at convention won't vote directly in this race, they are the most active, involved members of the NDP so any changes should be seen as potentially significant. 

On the other hand, I'm not going to do a full work-through of each candidate's friend list to see if there are any noticeable gaps or omissions in terms of high profile NDP'ers supporting one candidate in this race but not another.  And obviously, any of the gains any candidate had in the past week or so aren't all attributable to the Convention either as I'm sure all candidates are out pounding the pavement and working the phones. 

Here's what I found…

[Edit: May 15 update inspired by Tory McGregor's correction below. Apologies for my earlier oversight where I'd missed his Facebook group in my searches. Also added a late joiner to the race, Roger Bucsis and history may be repeating itself as I can't find any Facebook presence for him either.]

May 15 – Gain – March 31 – Gain – March 21

Garcia – 377 – +33 – 344 – +34 – 310
Harder – 204 – +19 – 185 – +3 – 182
McGregor – 100 –
+60 – 40 – +40 – 0 
Kress – 81 – +4 – 77  +6 – 71
Bucsis – 0 – 0 – NA

I freely admit that part of why these numbers are the way they are is because Harder and Kress may not have stood to gain a lot of Facebook friends coming out of convention because both were already quite well known entities within the NDP whereas Jaime is still probably a new face to a lot of people. 

But for me, the parallels to what happened with Ryan Meili and the groundswell of support as people got to know him and know his story during the leadership race are pretty exciting to see.  I think Jaime has that same ability to impress with his sincerity and enthusiasm and I'm sure he made some believers at the convention based on these numbers.