by WonkoKevin

After Clinton’s 10-point, er… 9.5-point… if you go by delegates, 8-point win in Pennsylvania, people are asking why Obama can’t close the deal. He’s the leader, right? The “presumptive candidate”? Certainly, presumptive candidates aren’t supposed to lose, that’s a no brainer. But how big a win should we expect from the presumptive candidate? For comparison we can look at how John McCain has done since he wrapped up the Republican nomination on March 4. On that night, he won all four states: Ohio (60%), Rhode Island (65), Texas (51… as many of his would-be voters were busy voting for Hillary), and Vermont (72). Only two states have had Republican primaries since then: he won Mississippi on March 11 with 79%, and Pennsylvania last week with 73%. So let’s call 70% the breakeven point–above it and you’re fine, below it and people are talking. Of course, if Obama was getting 70% or more now, the race really would be over.

by WonkoKevin

Changes in Wonkosphere buzz share suggest that Hillary Clinton will pull out a not-large-enough victory in Pennsylvania tomorrow, perhaps with a lead in popular votes of 3-6% but tied in delegates earned.  During Obama’s two bad weeks, liberal buzz share favored Clinton 60-40, a distinct reversal from the previous month or so.  In the last ten days though it has flipped back, with Obama ahead 60-40 and stable as can be.  Local polls seem to also indicate a relatively stable margin still favoring Clinton, but down in the single digits.  A four-point win for Clinton is not a win, really, but only a loss could keep her from moving onto Indiana and North Carolina… Professional bettors have Clinton as a 2:5 favorite to win Pennsylvania, and Obama at 1:6 to win the Democrat nomination. 

by WonkoKevin

The term “jump the shark” is a reference to the episode of Happy Days where the show’s beloved star Fonzie decides to do a stunt by jumping a waterski over a shark tank (see Reno 911’s hilarious takeoff…).  The premise is that when all the creativity in a show is long gone and there’s nothing left to say, it’s time to do The Jump, some outrageous attempt to generate attention for another three seconds.  Could there be a better description of the Democratic campaign right now?

Take two candidates who have said 37,500 words a day for the last 18 months, who aren’t 3 mm away from one another policy-wise, throw in more campaign money than ever, and add a 24/7-hungry media and what do you expect to happen?  ARG (I know, I know…) has Clinton up +20 in Pennsylvania in a poll released today.  What else can we talk about over the next 3+ months?  I sense a UFO story on the horizon… oh, wait, that’s already been done…

by WonkoKevin

Everyone seems to be claiming that Obama’s momentum will continue on for the next 2 weeks and he will win Pennsylvania, thereby closing this chapter of the campaign.  However, the term “momentum” implies “ever increasing”, and I am not sure the data bears that out.  I took the 16 Pennsylvania polls that have been done since March 24 and treated each as a true snapshot of the PA electorate, using the end date of the survey as the polling time.  If a day didn’t have a poll ending, I just carried over the previous day’s poll number, and if a day had two or more polls ending, I averaged them.  The graph below shows the gap between Clinton and Obama (positive means Clinton is ahead).  You’ll see that while April Fools was bad for her, she seems to have recovered, albeit not to the level prior to the drop-off.  I am not sure that a 6 or 8 percent win means much for her, but if the current trend continues she could end up over 10 percent again.

by WonkoKevin

Headline gotcha’, didn’t it?  One thing I’ve noticed from my time in the blogosphere is that (a) titles make a difference in traffic to the post, and (b) titles are often more “out there” than the rest of the post.  Given the opportunity of 10 or 100 or 1000 words in a post to say something outrageous, often the most outrageous statement is in the title rather than the post.  Here’s today’s excellent advice from Jeff Fecke at Shakesville: (more…)

by WonkoKevin

It was supposed to be over by now. In fact, back in March 2007, most bloggers were dreading this portion of the campaign season, for it represented the long haul between knowing who the two candidates were and the corresponding conventions. What the hell was there going to be to talk about? A few dreamers told us to consider the possibility that it wouldn’t be over by Super Tuesday, but who believed them? Certainly not the states, who ran over each other this year to be early. Michigan and Florida were so convinced that it would be over by Feb 5 they gambled their convention seating; nice move. Well, be careful what you wish for because now we have it–the campaign that won’t stop. Unless Clinton gets beat 60-40 in PA, this looks to be going all the way to the convention, and given the lateness of selecting a Democrat, the ensuing rush to November will be all the more intense. Bloggers and other politicos not only are going to miss spring break this week, they’re going to be going on summer vacations with their Blackberries close in hand.

So given that Obama and Clinton are going to continue to duke it out for months, what’s next? What happens when a conversation goes on way too long? Here are five things that happen in person-to-person conversations that go beyond their limit; I imagine the same will happen between both the candidates and their respective bloggers.

1. Obsessive loops–you keep on saying the same thing, over and over and over again. This is part of…

2. Go on auto-pilot. Everything is routinized so as to make it to the next day.

3. Say stupid things; also see: Say too much.

4. Tit for tat, see also: She said, he said.

5. No time to think–when all you’re doing is verbal tennis, who has time to think of something worthwhile to say?

by WonkoKevin

County-level results from Texas suggest that Republican cross-over voting may have well given Hillary Clinton a victory in the Texas primary, thus enabling a narrative that has allowed to her to remain in the race.  This has been reported in the WSJ, but my number crunching indicates the so-called Limbaugh effect may be significantly larger than is being estimated.  First, from Washington Wire: (more…)

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!

by WonkoKevin

Most people and polls are predicting close races in tomorrow’s primaries, with conventional wisdom giving Obama wins in Texas and Vermont, and Clinton wins in Ohio and Rhode Island. I am going so step out on a limb and make a bolder prediction: Obama will win Ohio by 5%, Texas by 12, Vermont by 24, and will even pull off a 1-point squeeker win in Rhode Island, forcing Clinton to withdraw by Thursday or Friday. My basis? Well, Wonkosphere buzz share numbers are hard to call right now. Clinton’s buzz share amongst liberal bloggers has overtaken Obama’s in the last several days, but most of that is death march stuff. My prediction is based on my observation from the last round of primaries that the polls, on average, seem to be biased against Obama by 10 points, effectively missing the superiority of his ground game. I think this will be all the more evident in Ohio and Texas where Obama appears to have benefitted from early voting, as his supporters have organized en masse voting marches. Eight polls over the last week have Clinton up by 4.5% in Ohio, and 11 polls have Obama up by 2% in Texas. Sure, conventional wisdom is they both come out even and Clinton presses on, but my money is that we’ll be hearing Taps sometime late Tuesday night.

by WonkoKevin

A quick study of today’s Wonkosphere buzz tone charts (Clinton, Huckabee, McCain, Obama) indicates that 3 of the candidates have had a rough ride in the last two weeks. It’s probably part tightness of the Dem race, and part campaign fatigue amongst the campaigns, media, and bloggers alike. Only one came out looking sweet, Mike Huckabee.

SPIKE DOWN–Clinton remained at neutral levels the last 2 weeks (all results discussed only reflect the tone of the partisan blogs), but spiked down to dangerous territory yesterday with the “dressed photo” story.

STEP DOWN–McCain was riding a wave of highly positive sentiment until the lobbyist story broke, which pulled him down in neutral territory.

SLIDE–Obama has slid from slightly positive to being on the border of significantly negative. With Obama and Clinton at roughly the same negative level, I think both are getting pulled “down” by the current news cycle.

SMILE–Huckabee’s tone went from neutral to off-the-charts positive, coinciding with his SNL appearance. Lesson for other three: Do more improv comedy? P.S. & BTW–I won’t embarrass them by naming them, but how could some bloggers have thought that Huckabee’s skit was not a skit?