by WonkoKevin

Congrats to Mitt Romney on a win last night in Michigan. I didn’t do too well with the predictions, although I do have a hedge. I did say that I wouldn’t be surprised by Romney 34 McCain 31, only Romney got more because the 10% I predicted for Giuliani, Paul, and Thompson didn’t show up. Romney seems to have found his voice when talking economics in Michigan, and this can be a winning hand–the economy has risen to the top of voters’ concerns. But will the Romney campaign realize they have a strength there and concentrate on generating excitement? Or will they continue to spend time and money on the attack? Last night’s pre-emption of McCain’s speech would seem to indicate the latter. In my opinion that would be a waste of time. It looks like everybody’s going to stay viable at some level thru Tsunami Tuesday, and with perhaps no one being way ahead by then, TV time will be critically important. According to Financial Week, Romney is financially positioned far better than the other candidates. McCain is starving for cash, he doesn’t appeal to economy voters, and a win in SC is not likely to bring about enough cash quickly enough to catch up with the others. If Romney focused on a positive economic message, combined with his war chest this could lead to Minneapolis. But I wouldn’t bet on it yet…

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.

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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.

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

Why is everyone ignoring the Wyoming Republican caucus results? In a state where only a few candidates came to visit, Mitt Romney won 8 delegates, Fred Thompson won 3, and Duncan Hunter won 1. The Wonkosphere appears to be uninterested in these results, but I think they should because they hint at the linkage between Iowa and New Hampshire, or the lack thereof. First, Huckabee got zero. Perhaps it is unreasonable to expect a bounce in 2 days, but conversely, Wyoming conservatives didn’t seem to care about Romney’s second versus first place finish. Second, Rudy Giuliani and Ron Paul, who had visited there, got zero. Even though Paul is running a national campaign, I think this demonstrates there will be geographic pockets where he isn’t on the radar. Third, Fred Thompson picked up a couple. I imagine the Wonkosphere will give Fred a pass on his performance in New Hampshire and place heavy expectations on him in South Carolina, regardless of the New Hampshire outcome.

by WonkoKevin

Almost 60% of all the political buzz in Wonkosphere was focused on Barack Obama, Mike Huckabee, and Hillary Clinton yesterday, one day post-Iowa. It would appear the Wonkosphere wanted at least one day to digest Iowa before turning its focus to New Hampshire. Clinton’s liberal buzz share went up from 20 to 25%–BUT her tone amongst liberal bloggers was below-average for the tenth straight day. So far her campaign has unveiled nothing dramatically new except a greater focus on youth-oriented policy. But surely she understands that Obama’s appeal to youth is not policy-based, no? Obama and Huckabee both got 5% bumps in buzz share from their wins, with Obama being mentioned in over 1000 posts in a 24-hour period, and Huckabee not far behind. Obama’s liberal tone and Huckabee’s conservative tone were both well above the average. John Edwards lost 7 percentage points (22 to 15%), as did Fred Thompson, not good portends. Rudy Giuliani was below 10% buzz share for the 13th of the last 14 days, Mitt Romney entered the ninth straight day when his tone amongst conservatives was below average, and John McCain stayed constant in buzz share, surprising given his assumed front-runner status will be tested in only four days.

We haven’t seen any new polling come out of New Hampshire post-Iowa, so I’ll go out on a limb and say that I think bloggers are under-estimating the bounce Obama and Huckabee will get. Conservative bloggers are quick to point out that evangelicals are a rarer bread in NH, and thus Huckabee can’t hope for much of a bounce. Maybe they are right, but I think Huckabee’s strength exists beyond evangelicals, especially given the lack of excitement for the rest of the field. I don’t think Huck will win, but I think he may well come in second place. On the Dems side, polls pre-Iowa have Obama just a bit behind Clinton, and again I think people are underestimating the “tipping point” that Obama’s large victory has triggered. People in NH need to commit less time, have much more time to vote, and can vote behind a curtain. NH has more youth and independent, whole break Obama’s way. Again without the benefit of any polling, my guess is we could see a 55-30-15 win for Obama.

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.