The God Index

The 2008 Presidential Campaign is heating up, with over 20 candidates. Naturally I want objective ways to rate the candidates, and sifting through their pro-themselves rhetoric can be tedious. A way around this is to use Google to rate the candidates. One facetious way of rating it is the Idiot Index, by counting the number of web pages throughout the Web that contain the phrase "candidate is an idiot". Hillary Clinton tops that one. More details can be found at J. Clifford's blog and at my brother blog, Beyond Opinion. (You may have to scroll down to get the story.)

But there are more meaningful ways of rating the candidates. Our First Amendment prescribes that there shall be no establishment of religion. I feel that every time the President, Vice President, or any candidate for these positions mentions words like "God", "Jesus", "salvation" and the like, he or she establishes a religion in our government. So a measure of the worthiness of a candidate is to measure how many times he talks about God or is associated with God. CNN claims to do it with their "God-o-Meter", pronounced as if it were the odometer of a car. But I don't know where they get their index from. Hence my God Index.

Here is how to compute the God Index of a candidate. Google for "candidate god" and call this quantityg. Google for "candidate" and call this numbert. Then the God Index I is defined by:

I = t/g

It is the reciprocal of the percent of pages that refer to the candidate that also refer to God. I take the reciprocal so that those candidates least associated with religion and God get the highest scores. The lowest God Index is 1, and represents the case of a candidate who can't get a web page up there with his name on it without having God in it. An index of 2 means half the pages that refer to the candidate refer to God, an index of 5 means that one-fifth or 20% of the pages that refer to the candidate refer to God and so forth.

The results are below. They show some interesting things. McCain, Romney, and Giuliani, the top Republican contenders, show low God indices, meaning that they talk about God and religion a lot. This I feel is the case from seeing them in the media. The index says that Ron Paul is much better, with a God Index over 6, the highest of any of the candidates. However, I heard Ron Paul refer to God a lot as well, so I am not sure how that index came about; maybe there's been a lot of talk about Ron Paul. He has a tendency to come up way out in front of the other Republicans in any measure that relies on the Internet for its data. To me the biggest disappointment is seeing Barack Obama come out as the Goddiest of the candidates. About 70% of the pages that contain "Barack Obama" also contain "God". I would be fearful that he would start a state religion. Up to now I have regarded him as my number 1 candidate, but maybe I will consider Richardson and Edwards now as well. Fred Thompson, the most Republican of the candidates it seems, scores unexpectedly high, and so does Independent Mike Bloomberg, so if it is Obama vs Romney vs Bloomberg, I may vote for Bloomberg. Here is the complete standings:

CAND	HWGOD	HITS	INDEX	PARTY
Paul	1800000	11800000	6.55	Republican
Thompson	1540000	9280000	6.03	Republican
Bloomberg	398000	2267000	5.70	Independent
Gravel	359000	1610000	4.48	Democrat
Edwards	1740000	7800000	4.48	Democrat
Dodd	421000	1740000	4.13	Democrat
Tancredo	515000	1910000	3.71	Republican
Hunter	480000	1760000	3.67	Republican
Biden	776000	2726000	3.51	Democrat
Brownback	532000	1840000	3.46	Republican
Huckabee	629000	1970000	3.13	Republican
Kucinich	701000	1990000	2.84	Democrat
Clinton	2060000	5450000	2.65	Democrat
Richardson	730000	1840000	2.52	Democrat
Keyes	324000	723000	2.23	Republican
Giuliani	1310000	2200000	1.68	Republican
Romney	1540000	2400000	1.56	Republican
McCain	1680000	2320000	1.38	Republican
Obama	1930000	2510000	1.30	Democrat