Cross-posted on e.politics

John Hlinko with Grassroots Enterprises sent over this excellent find today: besides dominating Google and YouTube since the Iowa caucuses, Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee are now winning the all-important CafePress primary.

As noted a couple of weeks ago, CafePress, an online retailer that sells consumer-created t-shirts and other items, has has been pushing itself as a political promotion tool this season. They've also launched an Election Meter that displays sales by candidate, and it shows that sales for shirts for Huckabee and Obama have shot up dramatically in the last week. John notes in Daily Kos that t-shirt sales for the candidates may be an effective leading indicator for their popularity, since as supporters are getting excited, they may want to show it to the world. Conversely, as supporters waver, they may be less likely to take concrete actions on behalf of the candidate, in this case spending money for gear. Other interesting finds from the Election Meter: Ron Paul's still relatively high but dropping, and Romney, Thompson and Rudy are waaaaay down in Biden-Richardson-Kucinich territory.

Genius! Let the CafePress primary take its place along the other metrics that online politics geeks use as a crystal ball.

– cpd