My research paper is on blogs, talk radio and its impact on politics. This article caught my attention because I’m a political junkie, but also because it’s relevant to my topic. This article is about Christine O’Donnell’s campaign in the Republican primary in Delaware for the U.S. Senate against Republican Congressman Mike Castle. The primary election was today.
To set the scene, Mike Castle has successfully been elected to statewide office 12 times in Delaware. All the polling had him heavily favored to beat Christine O’ Donnell who is a Tea Party backed candidate and was considered by many to be too extreme to win the general election in November. In fact, according to this article, even the Republican Party Chairman of Delaware himself, Tony Rous, referred to Christine O’Donnell as “unhinged, not fit to be dogcatcher (pg. 3).” This is substantial because very rarely does the chairman criticize, especially to this degree, a candidate running for the nomination of his own party.
While I was typing this post, I learned from CNN that O’Donnell did win. Although this article does not go in depth on the role of blogs and talk radio in this upset victory, it does state, “conservative radio talker and writer Mark Levin characterized Castle as ‘the most liberal or one of the most liberal’ House members (pg. 4).”
There were several reasons why O’Donnell was catching up in the polls and seemed to have the momentum in the last week of this campaign; however, I have to wonder how many other similar statements were made on talk radio and blogs about Castle. And, how much of an impact did blogs and talk radio have on this election? How much impact do they have on elections in general? Would this upset and others we’ve seen recently have occurred before talk radio and the blogosphere? I might investigate the circumstances of this election further to answer some of these questions in my research paper.
Link - http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129832759&ft=1&f=1001
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