by WonkoKevin

Every four hours each of the candidates’ Wonkosphere buzz page is re-generated, and it gives you a snap-shot of the 30 most representative posts about the candidate over the last several days (biased towards recent posts). We identify those posts that are most representative by using computerized text analysis, which measures how “close” each post is to another, and then selects those posts that are on average the most similar to all other posts. You’ll note that the 30 the computer chooses are independent of affiliation, so we can look at the ratio of red to blue to get a sense of which side is being more focused.

For example, in today’s buzz for John McCain, there are 7 liberal posts and 21 conservative posts (and 2 independent)–that means the conservative posts outnumber the liberal posts 3:1–in this small subset of the most representative posts. That means conservative bloggers are best describing what the collective buzz is. The same is true for Mike Huckabee’s most representative posts, where the conservative posts outnumber the liberal posts almost 3:1. What is interesting is that the same ratio holds for Barack Obama, 3:1! This means conservative bloggers are also shaping the Obama dialogue right now; liberal bloggers are still more numerous in their posts about Obama, but their dialogue on him is more varied, i.e. less focused. This will be an interesting development to watch because it’s the same “problem” we saw with liberal dialogue about Kerry in 2004–no central message, and no message discipline.

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?

by WonkoKevin

“It is time to start bomb bomb bomb, bomb bombing again. No, not Iran, but John McCain’s Google ranking.” In a sign of our Politics 2.0 times, the liberal site MyDD posted suggestions yesterday on how to “Google bomb” John McCain. By “flooding the Web with references to the candidates and repeatedly cross-linking to specific articles and sites on the Web, it is possible to take advantage of Google’s formula and force those articles to the top of the list of search results.” In McCain’s case, the goal of bombers would be to create web sites that link to negative McCain stories or videos; by embedding words on these new web pages, these words get linked to searches on McCain. This is not the first time Chris Bower at MyDD has led a Google bomb campaign. In October 2006, the NYT reported on Bower’s campaign against 50 Republicans, including Arizonan John Kyl.

A Google search on “John McCain” currently turns up almost all “favorable” results. McCain’s own sites take up the first five slots; other top listings are “objective” sites: listings of McCain on Congresspedia, the Congress Votes database, collected stories from the Washington post, CNN, and CBS News. The NYT endorsement is tenth, and a story in TechCrunch positive to McCain’s taking on Google and Yahoo! is 12th ranked. The only negative link in the top 20 is RealChange.org’s page on McCain’s skeleton closet, and they have a negative page on everybody.

by WonkoKevin

Mark the calendar, February 11, 2008, five days ago. That’s the day when Barack Obama’s conservative buzz share went over 50% for the first time, and it signifies the end of a campaign-long run “in the bullseye” for Clinton. Clinton has been the obsession of conservative bloggers throughout the campaign; in November, 1/2 of all conservative posts mentioned Clinton. Just as John McCain has made a noticeable shift to framing Obama as the likely winner, so too has the conservative blogosphere. It’s also worth noting the tone, or sentiment, of conservative posts about Obama has gone about 15% more negative in the past week. If Obama holds serve in Wisconsin, expect the trend to accelerate… Also today–check out Hot Air’s piece on the Two Mavericks.

by WonkoKevin

Wonkosphere buzz share now stands roughly equivalent to the delegate share that each of the candidates have:

Obama 52% (pledged) delegates, 53% (liberal) buzz share

Clinton 48% delegates, 47% buzz share

McCain 73% delegates, 72% (conservative) buzz share

Huckabee 18% delegates, 15% buzz share

Paul 1% delegates, 9% buzz share

This is really quite an interesting development for Politics 2.0. It suggests that the political blogosphere as a collective is allocating attention in a contest-by-contest manner. Before the primaries began, the blogosphere led public opinion by two or three weeks; now the blogosphere is tightly coupled to the one thing that now matters most: the delegate count. Pat yourself on the back blogosphere, you’re rational, adaptive, efficient, and self-organizing–a true smart mob!

by WonkoKevin

In a sign that conservative bloggers are either giving John McCain a grudging nod of approval, or at worst ignoring him, McCain’s conservative buzz in Wonkosphere continues to be very positive in sentiment. Supporing the former: The tone of blogs talking about McCain has been in a range considered very positive for the last 2 weeks, and in the last week it has bumped up even higher. No doubt George and Jeb Bush’s endorsement of McCain yesterday will anger some of the conservative elite but will probably be taken well by the broader conservative blogosphere. Supporting the latter: The number of blogs discussing McCain is down to about 2/3rds of what it was last week, and he is behind Obama and Clinton in overall buzz share.

by WonkoKevin

Now that we have a reduced field, what do the odds-makers say about who will win president?

John McCain, just under 2:1.

Barack Obama, just under 2:1.  The various indeces have McCain barely ahead of Obama six times, Obama once, and tied six times.

Hillary Clinton, about 2.5: 1.

Mike Huckabee, about 66:1.

by WonkoKevin

Depending on which set of assumptions you want to buy into, one either concludes that John McCain has it wrapped up, or Republicans have got some chance of going to Minneapolis with a nominee.  Supporting the former is the apparent fact that while California came out 42-34% McCain-Romney, the delegate count will come out something like 160-10, even with proportionality.  From FirstRead: “Speaking with reporters today, McCain adviser Charlie Black said, “To date, we have 775 delegates, Romney has 284, Huckabee has 205. It takes 1,191 to clinch the nomination. There are 963 left to be chosen, so Romney or Huckabee would have to have all of them — all of them — to get to 1,191. Now you can’t do that because a majority of those 963 are chosen in proportional primaries, which means you’d have to get 100% if the vote to get them all.”

But from a Hot Air reader we have this: “All Mitt (and Huckabee) need to do to deny McCain enough delegates to win the nomination is win 547 of the remaining 963 delegates - roughly 57%. Which means it will go to the convention, where anything can happen. Given that around 66% of Republicans voted for someone other than McCain last night, it’s not out of the question, especially given most of the upcoming contests are awarded on a proportional basis and McCain won’t be taking primaries outright (like he did last night).”

by WonkoKevin

I didn’t know what to be more surprised about this morning: (a) I was able to go to bed almost fully informed of the outcomes by 10:30PM, (b) Mike Huckabee has been annointed the challenger now in a two-person race, or (c) the Phoenix Suns are considering trading Shawn Marion for Shaq.   On the Democratic side, Chuck Todd at MSNBC predicted a 4-delegate win for Obama–out of over 1600 delegates!  You couldn’t get much more of a tie than that.  Of course, people hate ties, so there’s spin that Obama didn’t get the knock-out punch expected competing with spin the Clinton lost her last chance to put Obama away.  Moving forward, Reid Wilson at RCP sees advantage-Obama, as Obama appears poised to win most of the states between now and March 4, and figures the momentum will carry him to wins in Texas and Ohio.  Thomas Edsall at RCP cites others though that see Obama’s difficulty with Hispanic voters being a big barrier to winning in those two states.  People are already looking to Indiana, North Carolina, and Kentucky in May.  Remember, every Dem in the House is a super-delegate, so this race literally may be decided by the House of Representatives.

On the Republican side, a nice but not slam-dunk victory for McCain.  Romney may well drop out of the race today, and it’s hard to do the math that brings Huckabee to victory.  The question remains how long Romney and Huckabee will stay in, and perhaps the affiliated question, why.  The largest Wonkosphere-related lesson to learn from Tsunami Tuesday is that sometimes the blogosphere can get it right, and sometimes they get it wrong.  Conservative bloggers picked up on Huckabee earlier than anyone else and fell in love with his personality; as he picked up popularity in the polls, conservative bloggers turned negative on his policies.  Even with a win in Iowa, Huckabee’s buzz share began to decline in early January.  Over the past month his buzz share has plummeted down to the 5% range, almost trivial.  And yet, the MSM spin on last night is that Huck’s southern victories catapult him ahead of Romney.  Conservative bloggers missed it–why?  Three possible answers, all are probably a bit true.  First, the “opinion leading” conservative blogs aren’t connected to and aren’t paying attention to the religious right AND the South, which is being taken for granted.  Second, the South for whatever reason is under-represented in the blogosphere.  We know in general that Internet usage across the world is inversely proportional to the outside temperature… are there fewer bloggers in the more temperate South?  Third, Huckabee’s viral support is face-face ”word of mouth” and not blog-blog word of mouth.  Early buzz share data today indicates that conservative bloggers still aren’t paying much attention to Huck. 

by WonkoKevin

I have been so psyched for this day for so long.  Today–Tsunami Tuesday–marks the 6-month anniversary of WonkoBlog, and what a fitting day to celebrate!  As a political junkie, I love the horserace, and I am cognizant enough to know that we may be watching modern-day political history.  It’s another Christmas morning, in February. (more…)