Last night, Jim reported on the shifts in presidential candidate rankings on Alexa. Of the Republican side, Alan Keyes had the greatest increase, due to his sudden, unexpected announcement that he will be a presidential candidate. On the Democratic side, Dennis Kucinich had a similar surge, but without such an easy explanation.

These statistics are useful for those who are tracking the paths of the 2008 presidential candidates in a general way. However, I wanted to get a more particular and pointed picture of the candidates’ standing. So, I decided to do a comparative Google search to see which presidential candidate is the biggest idiot.

I searched on Google for the phrase “____ is an idiot”, with ____ being the first and last name of the candidate, except in cases like those of Joseph Biden, who is often referred to by different versions of his first name - Joe and Joseph. In such cases, I searched for only the last name - “Biden is an idiot”, for example.

The following are the results, from the least results to the most.

Duncan Hunter is an idiot. - 3
Sam Brownback is an idiot. - 4
Mike Huckabee is an idiot. - 4
Bill Richardson is an idiot. - 4
Mike Gravel is an idiot. - 5
Alan Keyes is an idiot. - 9
Fred Thomspon is an idiot. - 755
Dodd is an idiot. - 1,040
Tom Tancredo is an idiot. - 1,810
Dennis Kucinich is an idiot. - 1,830
Barack Obama is an idiot. - 2,300
Biden is an idiot. - 2,790
Giuliani is an idiot. - 3,250
Mitt Romney is an idiot. - 3,340
John McCain is an idiot. - 3,720
John Edwards is an idiot. - 5,730
Ron Paul is an idiot. - 7,420
Hillary Clinton is an idiot. - 7,630

Here’s the same information, given in graphic format:

Now the question comes to my mind: What does this mean?

The most straightforward interpretation is that the candidates with the most results are the biggest idiots. That would mean that Hillary Clinton is the biggest idiot of them all, with 7,630 web sites declaring her to be an idiot. Of course, that interpretation requires the belief that somebody is an idiot if a lot of people say so.

There are other reasons for people to call someone an idiot than that the candidate actually is an idiot. For example, a person who is threatened by the power of the ideas presented by a presidential candidate might call that candidate an idiot as an act of resentment. In this aspect, the most capable candidates should be called idiots the most often, as they’re in the best position to threaten people who don’t agree with them. It isn’t likely, for example, that Mike Huckabee is so much less an idiot than Hillary Clinton. He is, however, dramatically less consequential than Hillary Clinton. There isn’t as much reason for Democrats to call Mike Huckabee an idiot as there is reason for Republicans to call Hillary Clinton an idiot.

Then there’s the issue of time. How long have people had to care enough about a candidate to bother calling the candidate an idiot? In the case of Hillary Clinton, it’s been about 16 years. In the case of Ron Paul, however, most people have only known about him for a few months now. It’s worthy of remark, therefore, that already almost as many web pages are up saying that Ron Paul is an idiot than there saying that Hillary Clinton is an idiot.

So, I’m not sure how useful this Idiot Index really is. It’s more complicated than it at first appears to be. If people are willing to consider these many factors, though, perhaps the Idiot Index can contribute to a more holistic assessment of the relative idiocy of the presidential candidates of 2008.

That assessment starts with you. Taking a look at the results above, combined with what you already know about the presidential candidates of 2008, which candidate do you think is the biggest idiot?

We’ve been looking at sales statistics for items supporting the 2008 presidential contenders since way back in 2004, but lately we’ve started looking at indicators of traffic to campaign websites, Google News mentions, and even a google idiot index.

Then there is the number of MySpace friends brandished by each candidate on that flashy, seizure-inducing internet behemoth. To whom do social networkers pledge their political allegiance? Here are the MySpace rankings for candidates of each party (and no party) bridging two dates, starting on September 25, 2007 and ending up on October 3, 2007:

Democrat Christopher Dodd and Republicans Duncan Hunter, Tom Tancredo and Alan Keyes have actually suffered a net loss of MySpace friends over the past eight days. Alan Keyes is in his second straight week of losing friends, which matches his second straight week of being a presidential candidate. Barack Obama is still the most popular candidate on MySpace by far, and overall the Democrats are more popular than the Republicans, but the Republicans gained more new friends this week, coming closer to Democratic levels of friends.

We’ll take a look at the MySpace pages again after another week or so to see who’s trending up and down.

Alexa Rankings of Candidate Websites, 9/14/07