From what I have monitored on Twitter, Ben Carson may a well not be running for President. In the primary stream of election Tweets his name is nearly non-existent and the Tweets that feature him tend to be poorly formatted. To be very specific, Carson is mentioned in less than .05% of all Twitter traffic related to the main election hashtag.

It would be something of a surprise if he was tied with Trump as, well, he has basically no social media following.

But what does it mean for Carson to pull equal to Trump? The following list should be taken as a probability assessment without evidence.

A. It could confirm my suspicions so far, that Trump’s social media support and that most election activity is autopoetic, or these are hacks and robots arguing with and persuading each other in a self-congratulatory pablum. This can be true in combination with the other explanations.

B. Perhaps people really like Ben Carson, this is not an entirely unlikely scenario, but it seems to over look a great deal of other polling that suggests that Trump is strong. It is also difficult to take Carson as the candidate in this role as he, like Trump, is so deeply attached to the media. In this case, Carson is a favorite of Fox News. This could also explain why he has such a small social network footprint: support for Carson or Trump may break based on media preference. If Trump leads Republicans with smart phones and Carson those with cable, who will win the newspapers, and for that matter the bartenders?

C. The polls could be faulty, especially individual polls this early in the contest.

I am sure we will get more clarity at some point, but as it stands now, this is just more detritus in a murky stream.