by WonkoKevin

Iowa and New Hampshire were key. Always have been. Until they were over, and then South Carolina was the turning point. And then Tsunami Tuesday was the non-turning point. I think somewhere along the way Maine and Wyoming were important. What can we make of this campaign season that continues to refuse to conform? In Politics 1.0, averages and totals were the key stats–how many votes, how many delegates, etc. In Politics 2.0, it’s not the averages that define where things are going but rather the extremes. In old politics, the center wagged the extremes; in new politics, the extremes wag the average. When it comes to extremes this campaign season, one place in the U.S. dominates–the Inner West. Maybe we should look to the Inner West for where the body politic is heading.

The Inner West of the U.S. handed many of the candidates their best results of the season. In Utah, Mitt Romney won an astonishing 90%. Ron Paul had his best showing in Montana, at 25%. Barack Obama loves Iowa, which handed him a 79% victory. Fred Thompson and Mike Huckabee were big shots in the South, but it was the central plains where they brought it home–Thompson with 25% in Wyoming and Huckaee with 60% in Kansas (equalling what he got in Arkansas, his home state). Even Duncan Hunter had his best outing in the Inner West with 2% in Nevada.

There were several other patterns I observed. First, the South gave two of the three remaining candidates their biggest wins. Hillary Clinton pulled down 70% in Arkansas, and John McCain’s biggest victory to date came in Mississippi (79%). Delaware awarded hometome boy Joe Biden his best showing (3%); Michigan’s shortened list resulted in best outings for Chris Dodd (1%), Mike Gravel (0.5%), and and Dennis Kucinich (4%); John Edwards (30% in Iowa) and Bill Richardson (5% in New Hampshire) faded early; and Rudy Giuliani really did do his best in Florida, just like he had planned (15%). Alan Keyes, Sam Brownback, Tom Tancredo, and Tommy Thompson didn’t register above 0.5%.

by WonkoKevin

Hillary Clinton’s liberal Wonkosphere buzz share didn’t change at all yesterday, and that was big news… Huh?  Couple Clinton’s non-movement with John Edwards’ buzz share shooting up from 10 to 30%, and it can only mean one thing–Barack Obama’s buzz share went down 20%.  While there are several reasonable interpretations, mine is this: Clinton’s bloggers kept on talking about Clinton, and Obama’s bloggers took time off to blog about Edwards.  Edwards has maintained a base of about 10% buzz for the past several weeks, and I don’t see those opinion leaders going away.  My guess is they’ll turn their attention to Obama.  That doesn’t mean that voters will, but it can’t hurt Obama’s chances.  The other way to spin it is that Clinton’s base of bloggers is strong regardless of what happens with anyone else.

by WonkoKevin

I was just about to write a pithy piece on the remaining primary calendar when I saw news of John Edwards pulling out of the race:  (more…)

by WonkoKevin

While John McCain maintained a strong lead over Mitt Romney in conservative buzz share yesterday 40-23%, most of Wonkosphere turned attention to the South Carolina Democratic debate, and more specifically, the sparring between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Liberals and conservatives alike are gobbling up the good political meat–over 50% of the buzz this morning is about Obama and Clinton. Edwards was the third wheel, as his buzz share plummeted to the critical 10% level. On the Republican side, conservative buzz is very definitely concentrating. Giuliani was above 10% buzz for the first time in a long, long time, but it was almost all due to a Florida poll showing McCain now in front of Giuliani. Fred Thompson is also still in the buzz dumps, and poll at Townhall shows that a vast majority of Thompson supporters would go to Romney instead of McCain or Huckabee if Fred were to drop out. (P.S. Who gets the Duncan Hunter supporters? I imagine Romney too…) Huckabee was below 20% conservative buzz for the third straight day, and what the heck happened to Ron Paul’s bloggers? He’s been at 10% conservative buzz or below now for ten straight days.

by WonkoKevin

John McCain built a significant lead in Wonkosphere buzz share over the last 24 hours, leading Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama 28-18%. Part of that came from liberal bloggers–42% of their attention to Republicans was focused on McCain yesterday. Conservative bloggers also focused on McCain strongly. McCain led in conservative buzz share yesterday with 43%, followed by Huckabee (18%), Romney (15%), Giuliani (8%), Paul (7%), Thompson (6%), and Duncan Hunter, who announced he was dropping out, at 5%. Amongst Democrats, Obama led in liberal buzz share at 42%, ahead of Clinton (36%) and Edwards (22%).

by WonkoKevin

My predictions for the caucus and primary today are not based on any Wonkosphere hard data; as I’ve mentioned before, I think we’ve gone past the point where blogs are either future-predictive or insightful to the mood of a particular primary state, like Nevada or South Carolina. This may change come Tsunami Tuesday… My instinct is Clinton and Romney in Nevada, and Huckabee in South Carolina. The worry from Huck’s camp is snow in the northern area of the state where he is strongest. I could go on to say, “A McCain victory will mean…” or “If Edwards can get over 20% in Nevada…”, but I won’t. Who the heck knows anymore? Much to my (and probably your) delight, the electorate doesn’t seem to want the primaries to end. They’re not ready to select. When I talk to conservatives and liberals alike, they seem to change their mind daily about who they will pull the lever for. I myself change day by day–I don’t have anyone’s sign in my yard (I’m in Arizona, which votes Feb 5) because my wife and I can’t stay with our choice for more than two days in a row! As Chuck Todd at MSNBC said yesterday, March 4 may be the big day, when Texas and Ohio vote. According to USAElectionPolls, an IVR poll conducted on November 8 gave Clinton a 51-17 advantage in Texas, while the same poll gave Giuliani a slight but unsafe lead–basically it’s a toss-up on the Republican side. A December 1 Quinnipiac University poll gave Clinton a 45-19 lead over Obama in Ohio, and Giuliani a 29-13 lead over McCain. Of course, these are all pre- Obama and McCain and Huckabee and Romney wins, so those polls might not mean much now.

by WonkoKevin

The pattern is familiar.  Our relationship with a politician is not that different than our personal relationships.  Attraction is first: how the person looks, sounds, their personality.  Are we drawn to them?  But it’s easy to like someone for one, or two, or ten dates.  The question becomes, can I hang out with this person minute after minute, day after day?  While we admit the power of attraction, we are pragmatic enough to consider more deeply what this person is really saying and doing, for it gives us clues as to what will come.  While voters may become attracted to a candidate, in the end, given enough time, their policies and ideology come under careful scrutiny.  It’s happened to Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney and John McCain and Ron Paul.  All have enjoyed at some point in the campaign season huge Wonkosphere “buzz momentum” due to bloggers being attracted to them as a person, and then losing significant buzz share when bloggers began to scrutinize policy positions and ideology. Could the same thing happen to Barack Obama now? His buzz share has not decreased, yet, and the consequences of such would be huge as we’re now into prime time. But a perusal of the Obama buzz shows that liberal voters are questioning just how “right” Obama is, and whether he might be just a bit too right. (more…)

by WonkoKevin

Bloggers have turned Wonkosphere into a love fest as sentiments go positive, especially amongst conservative bloggers.  Mitt Romney’s buzz was at the head of the pack in terms of positive tone, and posts about both John McCain and Mike Huckabee have also been very significantly positive over the past four days.  On the Dem side, posts about Barack Obama’s have been super positive over the last three days.

(more…)

by WonkoKevin

Conventional wisdom (or as bloggers like to say, CW) says that negative attention is bad.  But Clinton’s negatives went way up in Wonkosphere and she won New Hampshire.  Huckabee’s negatives went way up and he’s going to win South Carolina.  No, negative attention is only bad if it leads to no attention.  It’s no attention that is death.  Case in point, John Edwards 2008.  Despite coming in second in Iowa within the relevant timespan, Edwards liberal buzz share (blue line) has consistently gone down, day after day, in all of 2008.  Likewise, conservative bloggers have also turned away.  Now Edwards is below the critical 10% buzz share line.  With all the fanblogs out there, if you can’t hit 10% not even your fans are interested.  I can’t get the Tom Petty song “Free Fallin’” out of my head…

Update: From the comments below the data are not very good news for Edwards fans.  Please note Wonkosphere is non-partisan; we in fact picked Edwards to win Iowa in our original pick in mid-December. 

It is true that there are lots of diaries on Daily Kos who are Edwards supporters (we wrote about it several months ago).  And it is true that only the main feed from Daily Kos is in our directory.  We tried to add the individual feeds but it didn’t work, and DK hasn’t responded back as to how to make it work.  But I just did a search, and over the last 5 days there are 40 diaries about Edwards in Daily Kos and 51 about Obama.  So the trend is broad.

by WonkoKevin

John McCain has reached his high water mark for conservative buzz share in Wonkosphere at 35%, up 15% from two days ago. McCain now faces the challenge that no other Republican has quite figured out yet how to conquer yet–how to keep conservative bloggers on your side after they start paying attention to you. Thompson was over 35% buzz share at one point (down to a trivial 3% now)… So were Giuliani (below 10% buzz share for 13 straight days) and Ron Paul (back up to 20% buzz share). Huckabee was too, recently, and he’s had a rough ride with conservative bloggers ever since. Bloggers are beginning to pay less attention to Romney, who slipped from 28 to 22% buzz share post NH. With him putting all of his eggs in a MI basket, it looks like do or die time for Mitt. It personally puzzles me why they’re panicking, as he leads in delegates, but maybe they know something we don’t. On the Dem side, liberal bloggers increasingly see this as a two-person race, as Clinton had a McCain-size increase in liberal buzz share moving from 36 to 48%, and Obama only slipped 3% post NH, from 43 to 40%. That means that 88% of the liberal buzz was on Clinton and Obama. John Edwards lost 5% post NH and is at the critical 10% boundary now.