The Web on the Candidates

* Left and right are buzzing about Republican candidate Ron Paul's surprising showings online. He's been the most popular candidate on MySpace since before anyone was paying attention to the friends-chase there, a reflection of the disproportionate number of libertarians among techies online. More recently, he's been at the top of Technorati's most searched terms, and he's also big on Digg.

But now these online forays are starting to earn Paul some unusual attention from the mainstream media. For example, he led the live text-messaging poll held by Fox after last night's candidate debate, to the apparent surprise of Sean Hannity. Fox's final results show Paul in a close second to former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, 29% to 25%. Paul's online supporters--who are a mix of strong libertarians, Texas contrarians, and internet tricksters--also hammered Christian Broadcasting Network's David Brody, whose Capitol Hill blog was buried in pro-Paul comments after Brody criticized the congressman.

* On the Democratic side, we've been watching with interest as Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama battle it out for the lead on MySpace. They've been neck-and-neck for the last two weeks, especially after Obama's numbers crashed and Clinton's team apparently decided to step up their MySpace efforts to steal the lead from him. Yesterday Obama edged past Clinton, 72,002 to 71,294 but something tells us this race ain't over.

The Candidates on the Web

* More signs that former Senator Fred Thompson is going to join the Republican race for President: Breitbart.tv has an exclusive video of him chomping on a cigar and attacking leftwing filmmaker Michael Moore for going to Cuba. Moore, who has a new movie, Sicko, coming out at the end of June and thus his own reasons for playing the celebrity-death-match PR game, gives as good as he gets, teasing Thompson for his huge collection of Cuban stogies and challenging him to a health care debate.

In Case You Missed It

* TechPresident announces a new partnership with TubeMogul and the launch of some snazzy new charts tracking viewership of the candidates' videos online. One significant discovery: Obama's big lead on YouTube vanishes when you compare him head-to-head with other candidates who have been YouTube's Spotlight. Both John Edwards and Mitt Romney have nearly as many total views.

* Michael Turk profiles the Capitol Hill Broadcasting Network, calling it "YouTube for Political Hacks and Policy Wonks."