The 2014 U.S. mid-term elections are upon us, and with candidates nationwide vying for Americans' votes at the polls, it's clear that political leaders are using a variety of different tactics to get in front of the public. In recent years, the use of social media to engage with voters has been on the rise, and our company took a look at the social presence of the two major political parties on Facebook to see how they compared.

It is now agonizingly clear to all of us that ISIS uses social media well. Along with the beheading videos, ISIS has pitched Somali-American teenagers in Minneapolis with what UMass Lowell Professor Mia Bloom calls "a potent combination of Somali patriotism and pride to engender guilt that can only be redressed through mobilization. Specifically, recruiters explain that those in the Somali Diaspora are a let-down to their countrymen and that there is nobody else who can help save them."

Polling has always been an interesting mix of marketing and science. Traditional polling is one of those subjects that only the few seniors or grad students who took courses like "Survey Sampling 501" can truly understand. For example, how could a poll of only 540 people realistically determine who was going to vote for Mitt Romney in Ohio?