I shoulda listened to the Wonkodata
by WonkoKevin
Congratulations to John McCain for making his nomination official. In the end, McCain won not so much because he forged a conservative coalition a priori, but because he ran the best campaign. After a messy start, he cleaned house and did well in all important dimensions: retail, fundraising, press relations, and consistency. These are all things that will continue to bode well for him into the fall. A positive word also has to be said about Mike Huckabee, who has formally dropped out of the race. Huckabee, not Ron Paul, was the pentultimate Politics 2.0 candidate. The blogsphere fell in love with him early on, provided grass roots support, and in part fueled his Iowa performance; in the end, the blogosphere is also responsible from being him down with 6 weeks of negative buzz following his climb in the polls. I doubt Huckabee could have gotten this far pre-Internet.
Man was I wrong on my Obama sweep prediction. Kudos to Clinton who actually outdid their own expecatations and who gained the right to claim victory this morning. My prediction of Obama wins was based on the fact that in the last 2 months of primaries, Obama’s poll numbers have been significantly underestimated. Not this time. Instead, I should have paid attention to the Wonkosphere data. Check out Hillary’s buzz share in the last two weeks (conservative-red, liberal-blue). Note how it spiked up starting 2/29. Let’s see what kind of buzz-legs her victories have for her now. Will she retake the lead from Obama in liberal buzz share? Will she again become the primary target for conservative bloggers? All this and more, stay tuned!
