Ron Paul's Campaign watched in Australia

In an article published by YourGuide, the Washington correspondent for Batemansbay, Anne Davies, writes about the internet phenomenon in both American and Australian politics.

Very interesting was this bit apparently coming from pollsters regarding younger voters.

But the real value of internet campaigns is they can energise young voters, who have had relatively low participation rates compared with those over 65.

Thanks to the Iraq war and rising college tuition fees, a record number of voters aged 18 to 29 is likely to turn out to vote in next year's election.

I personally dismiss the notion that young people are voting, as seems implied here, because they want free college tuition. However, all of the pundits shoving down neocon (R) and noecon-lite (D) down our throats, do not seem to mention this remarkable statistic when talking about Ron Paul's internet success.

In fact, CBS news reported after the 2004 that the predictions were true. More importantly that they showed up to vote for Kerry. Were they all liberals or were they showing up to kick out George Bush?

Andrew Sullivan's speculations seem to have much more merit than detractors of the Ron Paul Revolution would have us believe. And yes, they are also more likely to have cell phones. So what we are seeing in the pre-election polls is what we have always seen and it doesn't reflect reality.

Also of interest is that shortly after the election, the Main Stream Media had reported the youth vote didn't show up. According to Mike Connery at futuremajority.com, the story I linked above was actually corrected only after the "damage was done".

As usual, you can expect the MSM to spin things in whatever way will leave the electorate dejected and apathetic. "Leave the hard decisions up to the experts..."

Ms. Davies continues to report about Ron Paul:

Perhaps the biggest surprise of the cyber campaign is Ron Paul (ronpaul2008.com), an outsider in the Republican race according to all the published official polls, which put his support at about 2 per cent. But not according to the internet.

On Technorati, which tracks activity in the blogosphere, Ron Paul is up there among the most searched terms with Britney Spears, Paris Hilton, YouTube and iPhone.

The obscure Texan congressman and former gynaecologist is a true libertarian: he's a low-tax, small-government man, which also extends to keeping government out of foreign policy forays such as the Iraq war, which he opposed from the outset. He also opposes abortion. According to Republican strategists, the reason for his popularity is that his libertarian views are appealing to the small but vocal groups of Republicans that gravitate to the internet.

Others say it's the result of "freeping" or "spamming" by his tech-savvy supporters - something Mr Paul's communications director, Jesse Benton rejects. "We just have much more passionate supporters online."

Whether the support is real or confected, the internet has so far served Mr Paul well.