According to the stats on Google Reader and Bloglines, Fred Thompson, Ron Paul, and Barack Obama have the most RSS subscribers of all the presidential candidates. But there are comparatively few subscribers compared to users of social networking sites and YouTube.

After the jump, check out some snappy charts that show that, while some candidates are using RSS more than others, no one is using it to its full potential. Maybe the problem isn't the technology but the content.

Hi, I'd like to ask all of our Republican colleagues to go to the bathroom or go watch tv or something.

Um, yeah, just kidding, but here's why: I'm going to be talking about a damned interesting application that electoral and advocacy campaigns can use to keep their branding and messaging in front of supporters, and I'd rather that my Democratic friends get on top of it first. I've been impressed with the potential of widgets as an outreach and communications tool for months now, and a product has come along that looks to fill just about every role I've talked about an ideal campaign widget doing.

One of the most exciting things about watching the evolving use of digital strategy in the presidential campaigns is seeing the emergence of new best practices. The Edwards campaign provides a great example of what I mean. While many campaigns, especially those with blogs, have set up an RSS feed, Edwards has provided several RSS (Real Simple Syndication) feeds on its RSS Central page for supporters to more easily keep up with news and information from the candidates, the Edwards campaign has created several specific feeds, including an RSS feed of the candidate’s events calendar.

Inspired by the May 16th e.politics/techPresident article on the conspicuous lack of presidential campaign widgets, a group of software developers has started to build their own — if the campaigns won't help their supporters spread the word, these guys are happy to do it for them.

Almost all of the 2008 presidential candidates post news in some form on their web sites, whether they are press releases or collected news articles. Many candidates now also post speeches and host blogs on their site. The goal of all of these things is to give you the potential supporter, activist, blogger, or political reporter more information about that candidate's position on the issues, inform you of events, or communicate campaign news.

So how does RSS help take a candidate's information distribution machine to the next level?. Let's talk about some of our primary information consumers and how RSS can benefit them.