Huckabee surge suggests how race splitting
by WonkoKevin
With possibly as little as two months before the first primary vote, the fluid Republican field is beginning to yield the patterns that will define how things split come early 2008. Mick Huckabee’s third place finish in a recent Iowa poll and second place finish in a Value Voters straw poll gives him legitimate claim to being able to win Iowa (Huckmentum? Remember Joementum?). Over the period of Saturday and Sunday, Huckabee finished third highest in total Wonkosphere buzz share, the first time he has gotten that high. His buzz share trend in the past week is predictive of future positive movement in the polls occurring over the next 2-3 weeks. Below is a graph of his buzz share; note that not only are conservatives (red) buzzing on Huck, so are liberals (blue). Attention from the other side is a sign of legitimacy, and this is the first time this has happened to Huckabee.
Now check out the tone of his buzz over the last two weeks and see how positive conservatives have been, especially the last two days.
Huckabee buzz tends to go along with Romney buzz and against McCain and Thompson buzz, and this continues to be the case. Romney’s buzz share continued to be strong (20%) while Thompson and McCain are kinda tankin. Herein lies the pattern for how the Republican race is going to shake out: Giuliani v. Huckabee and Romney. More abstractly, I think this signifies the party’s struggle between social conservatives and war-on-terror conservatives (economic conservatives are lined up behind Paul, but don’t seem to have much influence this time around).
Can Giuliani keep the debate focused on terrorism? Can Huckabee keep the debate focused on social values? Can Romney convince conservatives that he mixes the best of both of them?
One thing Romney and Giuliani have that Huckabee doesn’t, and that’s cash. Ain’t no sunshine without no cash.
October 22nd, 2007 at 7:10 am
[…] post by wonker This was written by . Posted on Monday, October 22, 2007, at 8:09 am. Filed under Politics. […]
October 22nd, 2007 at 4:13 pm
Romney’s got the cash, the organization, and the religious right is flocking to him in droves right now because they don’t want to have to vote third party and give the presidency to Hillary. There must always be a pro-life candidate, and Romney’s the one with the other conservative credentials to win.
October 24th, 2007 at 6:56 am
[…] OTOH, check out how Huckabee has been able to maintain his Value Voter + Iowa poll bounce. Looks like he’s got some staying power. […]
November 5th, 2007 at 2:18 pm
[…] wonker placed an observative post today on Huckabee surge suggests how race splittingHere’s a quick excerpt […]
December 17th, 2007 at 7:15 am
[…] Many moons ago we uncovered that Huckabee and Romney appeared be to tied at the hip when it came to Wonkosphere buzz share, when one went up or down so did the other. Further, their fortunes seemed to be negatively linked to Thompson and McCain–whenever they went up the other two went down, and visa versa. At the time I posited that this dynamic was being caused by the struggle between evangelicals versus non-evalngelicals in the Republican party. Thompson is not getting any attention anymore, and Romney (like Giuliani) seems to be “decoupled” from the others–his buzz share rises and falls somewhat on its own. But Huckabee and McCain still demonstrate this teeter-totter, and with McCain’s major newspaper endorsements over the weekend, he stole buzz mostly from Huckabee. Huckabee still led in buzz share amongst conservative bloggers at 30%, but that was a decrease of 10% over the weekend. McCain shot up to 25%, edging out Ron Paul Romney at 21% and 18% respectively. Giuliani and Thompson both lost 4% over the weekend, falling below the 10% “We’re not paying attention” mark. Bookmark this post: […]