Considering the comments and drop in readership, it appears that at least 50% of the posters here were actually Cruz trolls and another 25% were Bernie or Dem trolls. This explains the popularity of the negative threads...too bad there was no way to weed these people out. I came here as a Rand supporter and it was a shock to read all of the negative comments written by people who were supposedly supporters. Now, I know that they never were. Too bad it too Rand dropping out to discover this.
Up until last week there were 4 or 5 people making the bulk of the sock puppet accounts. For whatever reason, they have an axe to grind against Rand, the 2008,2012,2016 campaign staff, or someone on the mod/admin staff here at RPFs. A couple of them are well known members in the tank for Cruz. There were another few who make posts on certain topics with the intention of drawing out the bigots to make posts that could be associated with Ron and Rand, possibly the GOP brand in general.
Another group of members who supported Ron but not Rand who had the decency to not post in the Rand forum while the campaign was going on, they have been coming in to vent a little about it, and to let people know how they were right about whatever they were saying 4 years ago.
There are a number of legitimately new members coming to try and sell their guy (and they do make more sock puppets), they are also on the other Rand boards doing the same, and getting similar results to what they are getting here. Mostly Cruz and Sanders, some Trumps.It is very reminiscent of the Gary supporters doing the same after some of the worst days of the Ron 2012 campaign.
But I would say the bulk of the activity in here over the last 9 months are people who don't spend as much time on RPF as they might have done 4-8 years ago, they don't follow Rand's campaigns as closely as they followed Ron's campaigns, but on big nights like debate nights, they come in and catch up on it.