by WonkoKevin

Oh man I love the horserace.  The Republican race is so wide-open, anybody could surprise.  Rudy, Fred, or Mitt–sure, no problem.  Mike and John looked poised for a good stretch run.  Do I hear whispers of RonMo?  Duncan, Tom, and Sam, watchout for Newt.  I even hear Condi has been freeing up her schedule…

According to the latest AP poll, voter opinion shows great potential for flux all the way up to the day before Iowa, and beyond.

Rudy Giuliani and Fred Thompson are each attracting significant support from core GOP groups, based on the poll conducted this week. Even Sen. John McCain of Arizona, whose campaign has been staggered by money problems and staff shake-ups, is backed by solid shares of suburban, college-educated and Midwestern Republican voters….The poll showed the contest remains a virtual tie between Giuliani, the former New York mayor, at 24 percent and Thompson, the actor and former senator from Tennessee, at 19 percent. Not far behind at 15 percent is McCain while former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney has 7 percent.

The Republican race is wide open–yeah, no kidding.  If I had to sum up the results from Wonkosphere so far, it’d be this:

Liberal bloggers are focused on Bush and ”issues”, conservative bloggers are focused on Hillary, and the Republican candidates are not being paid attention to.

Conservative bloggers outnumber liberal bloggers in our directory by 7:4, yet Clinton is consistently number one in buzz share each day.  On the liberal side, I can’t tell you how many liberal blogs I’ve run across that are liberal-focused, but do not discuss the political candidates in any substantive way (at least yet). 

All this means that the Republican candidates have to some extent gone unvetted in the blogosphere, and even in MSM.  Eventually though, attention will become focused and much more intense, and this portends of great potential volatility of opinion.  A candidate’s ability to manage the landscape of Youtube and Web 2.0 could make a big difference. 

And which candidates probably understand Web 2.0 best?  Yep, Newt and Al.

This entry was posted on Friday, September 14th, 2007 at 10:42 am and is filed under Horse race, Gingrich, Gore, Politics 2.0. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.