Will Linux Win the Next Presidential Election?

i_like_spam writes "Douglas Karr has posted an interesting breakdown, complete with bar charts, of the operating systems and server software used by the websites for 23 declared and undeclared presidential candidates. The breakdown shows that there is nearly an equal split between Linux and Windows servers among the whole candidate pool. More interesting, all of the Democratic candidates except for Hillary favor Linux or FreeBSD. 69% of the Republican candidates, in contrast, prefer Windows. Is this preference for OSS or Microsoft a true reflection of differing political philosophies? And, more importantly, will Linux win the next election?"

Comments

Not the party but the supporters

[jellomizer]

Not as much the Party Ideals that choose the Operating System, But the more active supporters who choose the OS.

Democrats generally have a younger following then the republicans. More younger people know how to use Linux and know enough about it to use it properly. So Democrats will typically use Linux.

Republicans tend to have an older following and they will use what they know. If they don't know then they will use what most people seem to use. So that will be windows.

Also Open Source People tend to bereave in a more socialistic view that is more compatible with the democrats views so Linux and OSS People will be more likely to support Democrats.

Hillary Clinton is a more of a moderate candidate so bulk of the Linux supporters (who are typically more liberal) will not be as much encouraged to help her, while the general moderate population will be more willing to support her, so they will use what they know and the general population knows windows.

There really is a strong correlation!

[CaptainPatent]

Even the more moderate Republican candidates such as Ron Paul and Rudy Guliani are running Linux whereas most of the true right wingers are running windows and most of the true left wingers are running linux or BSD.

Perhaps this can be construed as a statement of American corporatism seeing as the fundamentals of a Republican viewpoint involve making sure there are plenty of jobs by making sure the corporations do well. This would mean that "buying American" is the way to go. The Democratic viewpoint however, encourages the little man to do well so saving money and being a savvy consumer on an individual level are preferred along with "giving the little guy a chance" so various flavors of linux and BSD come into play there.

Definitely an interesting find!

Re:You're kidding, right?

[moderatorrater]

Agreed. This tells us absolutely nothing about the candidates themselves. However, what it can tell us is what their supporters believe. And the prediction that linus will win is easy, linux is used by the most candidates. One study I'd like to see is if political affiliation correlates to a particular OS for average users.

Ron Paul & Linux

[AnyThingButWindows]

If Ron Paul wins, then Linux will too.

telnet www.ronpaul2008.com 80
Trying 74.205.85.10...
Connected to www.ronpaul2008.com.
Escape character is '^]'.
HEAD / HTTP/1.1

HTTP/1.1 400 Bad Request
Date: Wed, 27 Jun 2007 17:17:44 GMT
Server: Apache/2.0.52 (Red Hat)
Connection: close
Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1

Connection closed by foreign host.

It's generational -- with the staffers.

[Valdrax]

I was surprised that Obama and Clinton had actually started putting videos on youtube [...]

I'm not. This is because 90+% of all staffers in most political campaigns are either current students or recent college graduates. When I volunteered in the 2006 election for a gubernatorial candidate that had been in office in the legislature for 20 years, we had a pretty solid YouTube presence. This is because every single staffer was internet savvy. I was the only volunteer for the campaign that didn't have a Facebook or Myspace account as far as I'm aware.

Social networking was primarily tapped by Democrats in 2004 thanks to the Dean campaign, but 2006 and on has shown that both sides are about equally savvy in this respect.

As long as politicians are mired in old thinking and do not understand current technology we will continue to have problems with the way technology is regulated and how it is being incentivised (or not).

Side note: This will ALWAYS be a problem because politicians don't really start getting into senior positions to affect things until they're in their 40's or later. Most of the cutting edge of technology is driven by people in their 20's. This generation gap does not look like it's going to change any time in the future.