by WonkoKevin

Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee are the two Republican candidates who have demonstrated the best resiliency when it comes to overcoming political adversity this campaign season.  As Huckabee continues his number one position in Wonkosphere buzz share (at 44% amongst conservative bloggers), he is the center of a lot of scrutiny from conservative bloggers, and he is the Republican liberals are learning quickly to love to hate.  Let’s take a look at Huck’s tone (positive versus negative sentiment) amongst conservative (red) and liberal (blue) bloggers, over the last two weeks:

As his attention has increased over this two week period, so have the negatives, going from 0.12 (= % positive words minus % negative words) to 0.10.  As the grey band indicates the average tone plus and minus one standard deviation (the “norm”), he has gone from slightly above average to slightly below average.

That’s hardly a big hit. 

If he was down in the 0.05 to 0.06 range, I’d say “Huck’s going to lose attention next week, and that’s death.”  When McCain and Giuliani lost attention, their numbers dropped into that range.  Seems like Huckabee is riding out the negatives good, so far.

Meanwhile, as Huckabee’s poll numbers surge, Mitt Romney seems to be holding ground better than the others (Paul exempt; he’s gaining a bit).  His buzz share over the last two weeks indicates he’s likely to remain put at his current poll numbers.  We see a bump on 12-06, the day of his “religion” speech.

Post the speech, Romney’s tone amongst both conservative and liberal bloggers has gone significantly above the average, good news for the Romney camp.  Positive sentiment doesn’t necessarily mean increased buzz later on, but it’s a sign you’re hanging in there.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 10th, 2007 at 10:01 am and is filed under Romney, Huckabee. 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.