A Rightwingnews.com poll suggests that Duncan Hunter has gained significant new support among the conservative netroots. Newt Gingrich was the most popular potential candidate, followed by Hunter and Mitt Romney. Chuck Hagel, George Pataki, and John McCain were very unpopular among the 230 participants in the poll.

The Politico and MSNBC are sponsoring the first GOP debate at the Reagan Library in Simi Valley, CA on May 3. It will be broadcast online on the Politico's web site, where viewers can submit questions to the candidates.

Ben Smith of The Politico reports that a new Hillary-obsessed website, JustHillary.com ('It's All About Her"), has launched. It chronicles its editor's obsession with Clinton and, by extension, the media's obsession as well. It features links to Hillary-centric news articles, editorials, blog posts, YouTube videos, and looks like it was designed in 1997.

A straw poll conducted by GOP Bloggers has Rudy Giuliani at the top of the heap at 32.2%, over 8% higher than Newt Gingrich, the runner-up. Another interesting metric is the "candidate acceptability" poll, in which Nebraska Senator Chuck Hagel has a -67% approval rating, probably stemming from his break with President Bush on Iraq.

The Web on the Candidates

James Kotecki has been offering the presidential candidates free advice about using online video but he's disappointed in the one-way conversations most of them are conducting (read: they won't respond to him). John Edwards and Newt Gingrich wrote text responses to his videos analyzing their online campaigns; Joe Biden's campaign subscribed to Kotecki's videos. No other candidate has yet responded.

Jeff Jarvis responds to an article in the Politico by techPresident's Micah Sifry and Andrew Rasiej in which they compare the presidential candidates' use of video to the online videos of British MP David Cameron webcameron, in which the head of the Conservative party posts disarming and off-the-cuff videos that take place in his kitchen, on work trips, or anywhere else he happens to be. Compared to Cameron, Jarvis calls John McCain's videos "overproduced" and "overlong"; "Obama is spending too much time showing himself in front of big crowds and too little time just talking to us... Hillary is more casual but not candid. Yet they are all reveling in their ablity to make their own soundbites instead of being subject to the clipping whims of some network TV news editor."

What's a little traffic inflation amongst friends? When you are in the news and advertising business it's a big deal. In fact, as Conrad M. Black and the Chicago Sun-Times can tell you it can also be a very expensive deal as well.

I ran across an item over at ValleyWag.com that discussed the traffic statistics of The Drudge Report and compared them to other popular news outlets such as The Washington Post and Reuters.

It appears that Matt Drudge is artificially inflating his traffic statistics by using a small bit of HTML, specifically this piece of HTML: META HTTP-EQUIV="refresh" content="175".

Discovering the major and minor edits made to candidates' Wikipedia profiles; Jonah Goldberg argues against the idea that the web is inherently suited to liberals; surprising findings about the effect of Facebook and MySpace on political opinion; Change.org gets into the presidential quiz game; Newt launches a new site called "American Solutions"; and the difficulties of registering and logging into candidates' sites.

Barack Obama is the winner of the Huffington Post/Yahoo/Slate mashup debate; John Edwards will visit Columbus, KY, the winning town in his Eventful demands competition; Off The Bus introduces Roadkill, a guide to the goofy and wacky in the campaigns; Newt Gingrich posts on Mike Huckabee's blog, world explodes; Bill Richardson releases a new video featuring Matt Stoller and Chris Bowers, with a cool new site to boot; and Mike Huckabee hosts "Vertical Day," a 24-hour Q&A with supporters.

A new video investigates Rudy Giuliani's "scheduling conflicts" on the day of an African American-themed debate; a video shows that Mitt Romney has invested a tidy sum of money in Iran, despite very public calls for others to divest from the country; some missing John Edwards videos turn up on YouTube; a new social networking site aims at online liberals; Ron Paul raises over $1 million in an end-of-quarter fundraising push; and Newt Gingrich will not be running for president in 2008.

The Republican CNN/YouTube debate is this Wednesday, and certain videos are getting "weeded out"; one writer suggests that we could be in a "banner moment for unmediated political action"; Jersey City's WFMU launches a Rudy 9/11 remix contest; pro-Hilary bloggers launch (and close) and ill-fated program to pay pro-Clinton commenters; Ron Paul beats Mike Huckabee at the "money bomb" game; another Paul haul is planned for Dec. 16; Digg lanuches a Digg the Canddiates page; Amy Schatz writes about Ron Paul supporters' aggressive tactics with the media, ensures hundreds of angry emails; the Clinton campaign gets cozy with Drudge; picking apart the candidates' email strategies; and two videos that might help you forget it's Monday.

It's finally caucus day! MySpace crowns Barack Obama and Ron Paul the winners of its own primary; Barack Obama tops the Wu-Tang Clan on Eventful's Hottest Demands page; Chris Bowers experiences three epiphanies; Earfl lets you record a testimonial about your favorite candidate; Mike Huckabee is losing traction online, but Hillary Clinton is getting more and more blog mentions; Mitt Romney holds a tele-townhall with voters, makes it easy to robo-call; is Obama advertising on Drudge?; Mike Huckabee thanks bloggers for "doing the Lord's work"; a former SC governor messes up his Huckabee endorsement; and is a Chris Dodd thank-you video to the blogosphere his swan song?

The Next Right launches; is Slatecard the "Republican ActBlue"?; Hillary Clinton's bad day; it's the network, stupid; Barack Obama is the jukebox favorite; Al Franken continues to get hounded by bloggers; Newt Gingrich hints at a 2012 or 2016 run; and Hillary and Barack dance in Puerto Rico.