Can the Social Network Predict Winners in the 2010 Midterms?

In Nevada, Republican challenger Sharron Angle is not only leading Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in the polls, she's also far ahead on the social nets. Angle's Facebook page had 104,059 fans vs. a mere 14,348 for Reid. Angle is also leading when it comes to voter sentiment -- by four points, according to the latest Rasmussen poll. And Facebook's public policy team says that Angle is piling on new supporters at a faster rate than Reid. In the last two weeks, Angle's Facebook fan base grew by 10,500, vs. just 921 for Reid.

So does that mean Angle will knock Reid out of the Senate on election day next Tuesday? It's anyone's guess. No one's taken a hard look at the correlation between activity on Facebook and victory at the polls. But based on some of the primary races Facebook looked at, Sen Reid might want to start harvesting Farmville for friends. "Many candidates who won their primary races had more Facebook fans than their opponents and actively posted campaign updates on their Facebook Pages," Facebook's manager of public policy communications Andrew Noyes said.