by WonkoKevin

Here are my picks for the New Hampshire primary. With the Democrats, I am mostly data-driven with a fudging of 1-2 percentage points, based on the fact that liberal buzz share in Wonkosphere seems to be tracking NH poll numbers pretty well. With the Republicans, I am going by current poll numbers plus changes in buzz share over the last 5 days, which heavily favors McCain and disfavors Huckabee.

Dems: Obama 42, Clinton 33, Edwards 19, Richardson 5, Kucinich 1

Reps: McCain 35, Romney 31, Huckabee 12, Paul 10, Giuliani 10, Thompson 2

by WonkoKevin

Have conservative bloggers gotten tired of Mike Huckabee already? His conservative buzz share in Wonkosphere has gone from 35% to 13% in the past two days. Huckabee rode in a love boat with conservative bloggers through the summer and fall. They were 4 months ahead of the public in noticing him, and talked about him more positively than any other candidate. Then when the polls moved up, bloggers switched from talking about his personality to talking about his policies, and it has been a negative-fest ever since. Such a drastic plunge in buzz share after a caucus win seems to me to be very tell-tale signthat Huckmentum has halted, at least until he can get a second win under his belt.

In other Wonkosphere results, nobody gets the heat these days like Hillary and Mitt. Clinton posted her 13th straight day in which liberal bloggers’ tone about her was below average, and Romney hit 11 straight days with conservative bloggers doing the same to him. Romney led McCain in conservative buzz share 31 to 28%, but the Mo is with McCain as he reached a high in buzz share in recent memory and has 6 straight days of increasing buzz. Barack Obama led in liberal buzz share again, as he appears to have plateauted around 45%, up from his previous level pre-Iowa of about 33%. John Edwards didn’t move, and neither did Fred Thompson, although Fred enjoyed his third straight day of very high tone from conservatives.

by WonkoKevin

Here’s a summary of what’s happening in Wonkosphere… ObaMo increases; his buzz share amongst liberal bloggers continued what is now a six-day upwards trend, and he is over the 40% line. Clinton’s buzz share remained constant but the tone of discourse about her was significantly lower than the average. Edwards continued to be down, below the 20% level; he seems to have lost about 1/5th of his buzz since Iowa. For the Republicans, John McCain continues a slow but steady climb in buzz share, up for the 5th straight day and now over the critical 20% level. Huckabee appears to have gotten no buzz share bounce from the Iowa win, and Mitt Romney’s tone from conservatives was below average for the 10th straight day. Fred Thompson has not moved, but I do note that many of the most influential conservative blogs were declaring him the winner in last night’s debate.

by WonkoKevin

Our two Iowa winners have a lot in common.  Obama and Huckabee are the youngest candidate in their parties; both are considered relative outsiders; both are considered candid; both set themselves apart from the current and previous administrations; both are probably not the first pick of their party’s command center; both are (or at least, were) not the darling of their wing’s Wonkosphere; both have little foreign policy experience; and both are considered likeable, trustworthy, and idealistic.  But to me, the Numero Uno reason that both won yesterday is that they are the best communicators within their respective parties.  When you combine the retail politics of Politics 1.0 with the real-time nature of Politics 2.0, there is one skill that branches both–communication.  Obama and Huckabee won because they can talk to people the best. (more…)

More thoughts on the Iowa results in a bit.  I think today’s Wonkosphere buzz share graph, comprising conservative and liberal blogs posts from 9PM EST Thursday January 3 to 9AM EST Friday January 4, pretty well sums up the post-Iowa spin, numbers-wise.

by WonkoKevin

Most of the trends in Wonkosphere buzz share and sentiment that have arisen in the past week stayed with us yesterday.  McCain, Thompson, and Obama continue at their relatively higher levels of buzz share; Biden remains constant in 4th place amongst Dems; Paul and Giuliani remain relatively lower; and Dodd, Kucinich, Hunter, Gravel, Keyes, and Richardson continue to not register much.  The two significant changes that did occur in the last 24 hours were that Clinton and Edwards swapped 5% buzz share (Clinton up, Edwards down), and so did Romney (up) and Huckabee (down).  At this stage, a one day change of 5% is not all that significant given historical levels of volatility.  Romney’s tone has also been higher the last two days and Huckabee’s hasn’t, perhaps indicating a further tightening of the race (could it be any tighter?).

I made my predictions two weeks ago.  I’ll make some more–if you make enough predictions one of them is bound to come out accurate:

Obama 33, Edwards 31, Clinton, 26

Huckabee 32, Romney 28, McCain 18, Paul 10, Thompson 8

by WonkoKevin

I can’t believe today has finally arrived!  I’ve been blogging daily about the campaign for five months and obsessing about it much longer.  Just as this represents a change point for the remaining candidates, so too it is a change point for bloggers, news writers, and political junkies.  No more conjecture–now we will have results.  The fact that both races are basically toss-ups is a realization of the wish WonkoSteve and I had back last February when we started working on Wonkosphere. 

I’ll present the latest Wonkosphere data in the next post, and see if there are any tea leaves that might gives us a hint as to what might happen today.  First I wanted to share some of the wonderful photography happening out on the campaign trail in Iowa.  Go below the fold for more. (more…)

by WonkoSteve

The buzz graph on the Wonkosphere home page shows combined buzz from all the spheres. While this says who is getting the most buzz overall, it does not track comparative buzz in a candidate’s “home sphere,” the one with the people who will vote in the primaries/caucuses. This is especially true of Clinton, who conservatives love to rant about (though as WonkoKevin pointed out, this seems to have lessened somewhat over the last week). For better within-party perspective during the run-up to Iowa on Thursday, here are comparison charts for the three presumable front runners in each party on buzz share and tone for the month of December.

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by WonkoKevin

For months now Hillary Clinton has been the dominant topic in the political blogosphere. In November, she led all Democratic candidates with 40% liberal buzz share in Wonkosphere, and she has never averaged below 30% in any month since June. It hasn’t only been the liberal blogs that have been concentrating on Clinton. Until recently, conservative bloggers have been equally obsessed with Clinton, routinely giving her well over 50% of the attention they give to Democrats. The last four days look very different, however–Clinton’s liberal buzz share has dipped below 30%, and a similar, strong downward trend has occurred in her conservative buzz share. Similarly, Ron Paul’s internet juggernaut has been the talk of the town; in November, Paul led all Republicans with 30% conservative buzz share. Yet he’s been below 20% buzz share for 6 straight days now. What’s going on? These data suggest that, as one might expect, the Wonkosphere is transitioning from a pre-primary to primary phase, and that means all of the old “attentional structure” that has existed is going to become much less significant in light of upcoming voting results.

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by WonkoKevin

Joe Biden was only mentioned in 82 liberal blogs yesterday, compared to the 290 liberal blog posts which mentioned Hillary Clinton. Yet Clinton’s overall Wonkosphere liberal buzz share (23%) was not even twice Biden’s (12%). How could Biden’s buzz share be so much relatively higher, per post? It’s because of the way we calculate buzz share, and it demonstrates that Biden is being talked about much more substantively in the posts that do mention him, whereas Clinton is being mentioned (relatively) more in passing. The same perspective is also positive to Romney, Thompson, Edwards, and Obama, and negative to Giuliani and Paul.

(more…)