Republican 2012 Hopefuls Need More Friends

The power of incumbency extends to Facebook, where Barack Obama has a wide lead in the number of friends over the field of Republican hopefuls gearing up for the 2012 election. Some of these listed may be more in the category of wishfuls, wistfuls, or wastefuls.

Candidate	Facebook Friends	Mutual Friends
Barack Obama	17,822,152	10
Sarah Palin	2,606,586	3
Mitt Romney	751,391	0
Mike Huckabee	522,079	2
Ron Paul	283,130	0
Joe Biden	271,971	1
Michele Bachmann	150,467	0
Donald Trump	146,866	0
Jim DeMint	127,177	0
Bobby Jindal	121,977	0
Newt Gingrich	100,489	0
John Thune	74,754	0
Tim Pawlenty	69,985	0
Rick Perry	51,455	0
Paul Ryan	50,908	0
Mike Pence	45,923	0
Herman Cain	42,289	0
Mitch Daniels	39,413	0
Mike Bloomberg	29,862	1
Chris Christie	29,388	0
Haley Barbour	16,854	0
Rick Santorum	12,211	0
John Bolton	5,170	0
Jeb Bush	4,841	0
Rudy Giuliani	1,891	0
Fred Karger	681	0
Jon Greenspon	581	0

The fun part of this list: if you are on Facebook too, you can visit these Facebook pages and see if you have any mutual friends.

Note: a Zogby poll suggests that a friendship gap is not everything.

Update 1/21/2011: Add Michele Bachman.