The math of growth - Ron Paul can win

I saw an analysis comparing online with offline polls for the Democrats and for the Republicans. Both sets of polls were consistent for the Democrats. There was a glaring inconsistency between the online polls and offline polls for the Republicans, with Ron Paul winning the online polls, but being a no show in the offline polls. The explanation that Ron Paul supporters have cell phones, but not land lines so they don't show up in offline polls is a lame explanation. I don't buy it.

I think if you put together the idea of exponential growth and word of mouth, you can understand what is happening.

Anything that has a growth rate also has a doubling period. If something grows at 5% per minute, it doubles every 14 minutes. At first the gains are small, almost unnoticeable. Double 1 is 2, only a gain of 1; double 2 is 4, only a gain of 2; double 4 is 8 only a gain of 4. So you can see that early gains are below the radar. But without listing every doubling, lets fast forward to the 18th doubling and we are at 524,288; double 524,288 is 1,048,576; double 1,048,576 is 2,097,152 which is the 20th doubling. The actual gains are starting to get very big relative to the early gains, even though the rate of growth is constant at 5% per minute.

Ron Paul is not gaining acceptance by spending lots of money to bend peoples minds through advertisements. His message has great appeal and is being spread spontaneously by word of mouth. One person tells another, then both each tell others, like the exponential doubling explained above. The internet works like the traditional gossip grapevine where information spread by word of mouth. This is why Ron Paul has become well known, and well accepted on the internet, even though his penetration there is probably still in the early stages. I asked both my adult daughters, for example if they had heard of Ron Paul on the internet, and they both told me they were too busy with their everyday lives to have taken time to look at politics on the internet so far ahead of the elections.

I think that we are just at the beginning of the power of word of mouth in the spread of the Ron Paul message outside the internet. When individuals start taking it upon themselves to buy or make Ron Paul literature and signs to communicate the message to others, the early gains will be slow, but the exponential growth curve will make later gains huge.

So posting a blog or emailing someone the link to a good Ron Paul youtube video will evolve into things like water cooler conversations, passing out pamphlets at public events and attending rallies.

Only in the final stages, if enough support is earlier generated to fund advertisements will the last push bring in the final group of voters who have not been reached by the flames of the growing grassroots wildfire.

Of course the question is how deeply will the message of freedom reach into society. Some cannot be reached because they have thinking patterns which are unchangeable, but there are many who can understand the disadvantage to themselves from the present system of plunder and control.

Aside from Ron Paul's election being extremely important to reverse our march away from freedom, it will be interesting to watch this portion of history unfolding.