Kelly Clarkson + Ron Paul tweet = Sales?

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Image Credit: Stephen Lovekin/Getty Images

When former American Idol champ Kelly Clarkson threw her support behind Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul last week, she did it out of genuine enthusiasm for Pauls Libertarian-leaning ideas.

Strangely, the shout-out, which sparked a minor but intense flame war amongst her Twitter followers, may have ended up actually being lucrative for her.

In the wake of the Paul dust-up, Clarkson appears to have gotten a sales bump. Her 2011 album Stronger crept up to number 11 on the iTunes albums chart, and it is currently clocking in at number 14 on Amazon after spending most of the past month in the 40s. While we wont have hard numbers until the SoundScan figures are released on Wednesday, its safe to say that Clarkson has sold more copies of Stronger than she did last week.

But before everybody jumps to the conclusion that theres some sort of grassroots campaign by Pauls followers to elevate Clarksons chart status, there are a number of issues that could be at play here. As stated before, its uncertain exactly how much of a sales increase is necessary to make the jumps that Stronger did, so the actual figures could be relatively insignificant all told.

And those sales might not be from Paul supporters looking to hitch their wagons to a star; rather, it could simply be people cashing in the gift cards in their Christmas stockings or finding replacement albums for all the duplicate copies of Adeles 21 that their aunts gave them.

Besides, if Pauls supporters were really mobilizing to throw their weight behind musicians who endorse their boy, then shouldnt Michelle Branchs latest album! rank higher than 3,854 on Amazon?

Clarkson certainly got some headlines, which maybe led to some awareness and thus increased sales, but its hard to judge on such limited information. Just in case, maybe Adam Lambert should give Newt Gingrich a shout-out to test our theory? Your move, Glambert.

Read more on EW.com:Kelly Clarkson gets into extended Twitter war over endorsement of Ron PaulKelly Clarkson isnt the only celeb showing support for a presidential hopefulKelly Clarkson rocks out with flash mobs in new video Stronger (What Doesnt Kill You)