Minority groups are more positive in their outlook on how social media impacts the political landscape. While all groups believe that social media makes campaigns more negative, whites thought so significantly more.

There were around 1.2 million tweets about Tuesday's Fox/Wall Street Journal debate within the United States, part of the the paradigmatic shift toward online political marketing and away from traditional TV or print media. Ted Cruz garnered the most attention on Twitter during the debate, mentioned in more than 65,500 tweets.

The main questions focused on fiscal, immigration, foreign policy and defense issues and were not as scathing as some asked in the CNBC debate. Trump and Carson seemed to fall behind the more knowledgeable candidates when answering questions.

Behind the two jockeying poll leaders are two half-Cuban senators who now threaten to emerge as the strongest Republican primary candidates. Sens. Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz entered the Senate riding the Tea Party populist wave in 2010 and 2012, respectively.

The odds for a candidate vying for the nation's top job after hosting SNL are not great. Former candidates for president have hosted the show before their respective elections and none has won the White House.

It has been a disappointing year for pollsters around the globe. Nate Silver, who successfully anticipated the results of the 2008, 2010 and 2012 elections, got the British elections wrong earlier this year. Elections in Turkey, Canada and Israel have all gone surprisingly awry when compared to poll predictions.

Both Donald Trump and Jeb Bush began promoting their recently released books this week. In a tradition that dates back at least to John F. Kennedy's Pulitzer Prize winning "Profiles in Courage." Candidates for president are nowadays almost uniformly published authors.

From his brother's former speechwriter David Frum making the association with cartoon character Bob the Builder's theme song to John Podhoretz writing on Twitter that the new tagline "may be literally the worst slogan I've ever heard," Jeb's attempt to reignite his campaign is already facing fire.

Despite the fact that Sen. Bernie Sanders is tapping into the popular anti-establishment wing of the Democratic Party, the primary field looks relatively predictable. The Republican one, not so much.

It's been three years since I've written one of these Red, White & Blogs, and I'm using the occasion to reintroduce the column and introduce you to its new columnist, Philip Rosenstein, an enterprising young journalist who happens to have a fascination with politics and media. Rosenstein, who is also founder of WhiteHousePress.com, will also edit and curate Marketing Politics Daily, a new short-run publication from MediaPost that will run through the 2016 elections. He won't be doing it alone.