Paul buzz share 35% Saturday
by WonkoKevin
Ron Paul certainly was the focal point of conservative bloggers on Saturday with 35% Wonkosphere buzz share, up from 20% on Friday. The noise comes from a couple of story lines…
Lew Rockwell reports that Paul won a NJ straw poll with 72% of attendees. From M Rebman: “Garry Cobb: “This vote was in North Jersey, which is supposedly Rudy’s territory given its proximity to New York. I believe he received only a few votes… On a side note, Rudy’s speaker (Bill Spadea, who is a great speaker, by the way), in an attempt to sell his candidate, brought up the fact that Rudy had people in NYC arrested for jaywalking…. and then defended the policy! Interestingly enough, Mr. Spadea admitted that he admires Ron Paul and that his own father will probably be voting for the Dr. Paul.” According to the campaign’s data, the only two candidates that beat Paul as often as Paul beats them in straw polls are Fred Thompson and Mitt Romney.
The campaign appears to have gotten twice its goal in a one week internet fundraising effort, raising $1M compared to its $500k goal. Paul’s campaign had this to say in an email sent out out during the drive: “The media might be able to erase post-debate online polls that showed Ron Paul won. They might be able to dismiss Ron Paul’s support as “just the Internet” (whatever that means). But they can’t dismiss the fact that thousands of people from Manchester to Pasadena are supporting Ron Paul’s campaign for president with their hard-earned money - with $5 donations, $2,300 ones, and every amount in between.”
The most interesting Paul buzz yesterday comes from two liberal blogs. From Comments from Left Field:
I’ve been going to New Hampshire off and on for the last three weeks to see my brother. Week before last, I got off the highway to take the scenic route along the coast, then cut inland and went north to where my brother lives, and I noticed something fairly…odd. Ron Paul lawn signs everywhere. They outnumbered the Giuliani signs, the Romney signs, and the Hillary signs combined.
Now, I don’t want to make too much out of this, but I grew up in NH surrounded every 4 years by the primary machines of candidates from the excessively well-financed to the shoe-string-and-a-prayer. There are certain patterns that come with lawn signs, and very small but occasionally stunningly-accurate predictions can be made from watching them…
’m going to go out on a slight limb here and suggest that what these signs may mean is an unexpectedly good showing in NH for Ron Paul - 3rd, possibly even 2nd. Given a Pub field led by a New York mayor who’s doing well in the NH polls but turns the stomachs of the kinds of people who turn out for the Pub primaries, an ex-Mass Gov NH voters know and heartily despise, an ex-favorite who’s changed beyond all recognition (personally, I think McCain will be out after an embarrassing loss in the NH primary), and a clutch of out-where-the-buses-don’t-run candidates so far to the right they’ll be competing with LaRouche for the John Birch Society vote, I suspect we could be looking at the potential for a real upset in February.
From Newshoggers:
Although the MSM has done all it could to ignore and/or marginalize Paul’s candidacy, he’s been coming up with respectable showings in all the early results, including besting Guliani and Thompson in the Mackinac straw poll in Michigan this week. New Hampshire is a small enough state where a true grassroots effort could really take root and no one has a more enthusiastic group of supporters.
The professional pundits ignore the cranky Yankee factor, but it’s not a phenomen to be taken lightly. They don’t come any crankier or independent than they do in New Hampshire and I think we’ll see the first signs of what I predicted back in early 05. The electorate is sick to death of politics as usual and Ron Paul, whatever else one can say about him, is not your usual politician. He shoots straight and he stands on principle. That will resonate well in the Granite State.
… On a concluding note, I want to comment on some emails that have come to us about our buzz share number being “buzzed” by some internet spam antics by Paul supporters. When Ron Paul’s buzz share numbers go down, we get an email or two from a Paul supporter saying we must be crazy–isn’t Paul #1 on Technorati? When Paul’s buzz share numbers go up, we get the same few emails saying we’re crazy, but instead pointing to Paul’s lower poll numbers–isn’t this all just an Internet scam by Paul supporters?
Paul’s Wonkosphere buzz share is neither a Technorati search ranking nor a national poll of the voting populace–it is an internet poll that changes every four hours, and depends solely on what the blogs in our directory are talking about. There is no black box in terms of what gets included in buzz share–if the blog or web site is not shown in our directory, it’s not being counted.
Paul has a lot more active blogging community than the other candidates, true, but that is not the primary reason that his buzz share numbers were high yesterday–he’s hovered around 15-20% for the last month, so the increase to 35% is significant.
Finally, remember that buzz share is relative. If conservatives were blogging more about the other candidates, Paul’s share of that total buzz would go down. Paul’s buzz share numbers were large yesterday in part because nobody had much to say about Giuliani, Thompson, McCain, or Romney.
