Will young Paul, Huckabee backers stay with GOP?

Once former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and Texas Rep. Ron Paul were both out of the race, their many young supporters were faced with a choice: Should they switch to the party's pick, find another candidate, cast a write-in vote or sit the election out?

Huckabee and Paul appealed to young voters for qualities not associated with presumed nominee John McCain--Huckabee for his conservative Christianity and Paul for his anti-war libertarianism.

Most members of Huck's Army, a Web site for Huckabee supporters, plan to follow his advice to back McCain, although a number have "some reservations," said David Schmidt, 23, executive director of the site.

Paul has not endorsed another candidate and says his supporters "should do whatever they want." But at a party the night before a recent rally in Washington, he told one Paulite, "The contest is to get as many votes as we can to not support the two major candidates."

Electing a third-party candidate "would be the best thing for the country," Paul said. "Whether (Obama) wins or McCain wins, policies won't change."

Obama's Web site has stood out as the most popular of any candidate almost every month for the past year, according to Internet monitoring site Compete.com. In February, his site attracted more than 3 million unique visitors.

But from October through last December, Paul's site beat even Obama's. Web users flocked to both Huckabee and Paul, who in January attracted more than 770,000 unique visitors each, according to Compete.com.

For some, that online political involvement translated to participation in political rallies and real-life campaigning.

"The day before I left home for Christmas, I started walking my precinct," said Iowa State University graduate student Brinn Shjegstad, 25, a Huckabee supporter.