Internet buzz accurately predicts polling results
Wonkosphere.com buzz share results for October suggest that Barack Obama will gain ground on Hillary Clinton in national polls over the next few weeks, and Chris Dodd will also move up. The results also predict that Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney will begin to pull away from Fred Thompson.
(PRWEB) November 7, 2007 — Wonkosphere.com reports that voter sentiment seems to be pushing the Republican and Democratic races in opposite directions. “The Republican race, which has been very fluid, appears to be shaping up to be a fight between Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney. Fred Thompson lost 50% of his buzz share amongst conservative bloggers in October, and that’s not a good sign,” said Steve Corman of Wonkosphere. “On the Democratic side, buzz share results suggest that Barack Obama is going to moderately cut into Hillary Clinton’s lead in national poll numbers over the next few weeks.”
The predictions come from Wonkosphere.com, a new web service that uses patented technology to track and analyze over 1200 political blogs. Wonkosphere’s buzz share is calculated every four hours and measures how much bloggers are talking about a particular candidate. In October, Ron Paul led all Republican candidates with 16% buzz share amongst conservative bloggers, repeating his win in September. Rudy Giuliani was second with 13%, followed by Mitt Romney (11%), Fred Thompson (7%), Mike Huckabee (6%), and John McCain (4%).
“Total buzz share doesn’t tell the whole picture though,” said Wonkosphere’s Kevin Dooley. “We have found that it’s not the absolute amount of buzz share that matters, but rather the change in buzz share which is predictive of movement in the national poll numbers. So while Ron Paul won October, he was at the same level of buzz share in September, so we don’t expect his national poll numbers to move. Conversely, Giuliani and Romney both gained buzz share in October, so we expect them to gain in polls, almost exclusively at the expense of Fred Thompson.”
Amongst liberal bloggers, Hillary Clinton (21%) won buzz share in October, followed by Barack Obama (16%), John Edwards (13%), Joe Biden (6%), and Chris Dodd (5%). Comparing these results to September, Wonkosphere predicts that Obama will gain ground on Clinton, Edwards will lose some ground, and Chris Dodd will begin to look like the front-runner for viable “fourth choice”.
All-purpose candidate Stephen Colbert made a dent in the Wonkosphere with the announcement of his South Carolina-only, two-party bid. Taking into account his late entry, Colbert had more buzz share amongst liberal bloggers than Al Gore, Bill Richardson, Dennis Kucinich, and Mike Gravel. Amongst conservative bloggers, Colbert got more share of buzz than Sam Brownback, Tom Tancredo, Duncan Hunter, Newt Gingrich, and Alan Keyes.
Technology makes measuring buzz share easy
The buzz share results come from Wonkosphere.com, a new web site which tracks and analyzes over 1200 political blogs each day. Patented technology from Arizona State University (ASU) is used to measure each candidate’s buzz share, as well as whether bloggers are ranting or raving about the candidate. Wonkosphere is operated by Crawdad Technologies, a new venture started by Corman and Dooley, who are also professors at ASU. “We knew that the 2008 political campaign would be influenced in unpredictable ways by the Internet,” said Dooley. “We created Wonkosphere.com as a way to give millions of political blog readers a way to stay on top of what was happening across the whole political blogosphere.”
“Technology allows us to keep track of hundreds of times more blogs than any individual has time to read,” added Corman, “and it also allows the analysis to be completely unbiased, so that we can report what’s going on in a truly non-partisan fashion.”
About Wonkosphere
Wonkosphere is designed for bloggers, media, political activists, and political junkies who need to stay on top of the 2008 Presidential race but can’t spend all day searching for the hottest and most relevant material. Wonkosphere has been highlighted by such outlets as USA Today, US News & World Report, Information Week, WIRED Online, MyDD, Andrew Sullivan, Lew Rockwell, Hugh Hewitt, and Reformed Chicks Blabbing. Wonkosphere provides an analysis of the political buzz that is timely and unbiased, made possible by tracking and analyzing over 1200 blogs and web sites per day with its patented text analysis technology. This technology measures each candidate’s buzz share and tone, and highlights the most representative and linked posts. Wonkosphere is a wholly-owned service of Crawdad Technologies, LLC. www.Wonkosphere.com







November 7th, 2007 at 8:52 am
[…] « Internet buzz accurately predicts polling results […]
November 26th, 2007 at 9:03 am
[…] In earlier posts we’ve discussed how blogs are predictive of popular opinion–specifically, changes in buzz share tend to be followed by changes in poll numbers 2-3 weeks later. The main reason is that blogs acts as early adopters of news stories and ideology, and vet these for the broader public. […]
December 3rd, 2007 at 8:45 am
[…] about since last March. What will it look like in December? Well, as the Wonkosphere goes, so go the poll numbers, and things are looking bright today for the candidate darlings, Mike Huckabee and Barack Obama, […]
December 6th, 2007 at 8:55 am
[…] the increased buzz share that Ron Paul got in November a sign that the polls may move in his direction in the coming weeks, or an indication that Paul bloggers are mobilizing even more as we hit […]
December 20th, 2007 at 7:57 am
[…] over the last week or two may have predictive power concerning what will happen on January 3, in the same manner that buzz share has been predictive of poll numbers throughout the rest of the race. Numbers are […]
December 28th, 2007 at 9:54 am
[…] In previous posts we’ve discussed how changes in Wonkosphere buzz share are predictive of changes in national poll numbers 2-3 weeks hence. With Iowa less than one week away, however, a 2-3 week-ahead prediction doesn’t do much good. And because of the impending January 3 date, everything is in hyperspeed now. So we need to look for other clues in the data. What we find is that the buzz share numbers in the conservative blogosphere largely mimic the current national polling numbers, while the buzz share numbers in the liberal blogosphere largely mimic the current poll numbers coming out of New Hampshire. […]