Digg updates candidates section: Ralph Nader is one unpopular guy

Today Digg pushed out an update to its popular candidates section, the part of Digg that tracks all things politics.

While mostly a house cleaning move to get rid of campaign dropouts, there's some fun data to play with using the four other listed candidates alongside John McCain and Barack Obama. One of them being Ralph Nader's unpopularity with the Digg community.

The section is a sort of catch-all for stories related to each candidate. It also displays friend counts of each candidate and people who have effectively "dugg" them. Of those numbers, Obama currently has the lead with nearly 20,000 people following him. John McCain comes in at a mere 2,019. Nader on the other hand clocks in at just 10, which goes in tandem with a story Dugg about his running announcement that received nearly unanimous votes of disapproval from commenters.

While the befriending feature on Digg is not a clear indication of either candidate's ties with the community it's a sign of how much they're focusing on their social-networking campaigns. Other social news services like Twitter have gotten interest from the candidates, but none of them have the supercharged community Digg does, albeit its echo chamber that leans towards less publicly popular candidates like Ron Paul.

Also introduced today is a dedicated section to Olympics news which is currently devoid of any stories.