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

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

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.

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by WonkoKevin

On November 20 I wrote a blog “Do conservative bloggers even care who is running?” The premise was based on the fact that in that day’s current Wonkosphere buzz (which is an automatically-generated set of the most representative posts made that day), all twenty posts–every single one–was about Hillary Clinton. Many were from Against Hillary, and Below the Beltway had a prescient post (Will Iowa be Hillary’s Stumbling Block?). Today for the first time in memory the conservative buzz contains no posts about Clinton. It’s all about Huckabee and Romney and McCain, with a dash of Thompson (Rudy who?). The assassination of Bhutto, which was predicted to be favorable to McCain, has also been favorable to Romney, both gaining from Huckabee’s curious comments on illegal Pakastani immigrants. While national sentiment continues to swing to Huckabee, it lags by several weeks the sentiment in the blogs, and that doesn’t look good for Huck–the tone about him from conservative blogs has hit another low point. We continue to move to Minneapolis in “prefect storm” conditions. On the Democratic side, the polls and the buzz share data continue to predict Iowa as tied, with the mo on the side of Edwards. Jerome Armstrong at MyDD has some great data on how the three candidates have invested in an Iowa win.

by WonkoKevin

In previous posts we’ve discussed how changes in Wonkosphere buzz share are predictive of changes in national poll numbers 2-3 weeks hence.  With Iowa less than one week away, however, a 2-3 week-ahead prediction doesn’t do much good.  And because of the impending January 3 date, everything is in hyperspeed now.  So we need to look for other clues in the data.  What we find is that the buzz share numbers in the conservative blogosphere largely mimic the current national polling numbers, while the buzz share numbers in the liberal blogosphere largely mimic the current poll numbers coming out of New Hampshire. (more…)

by WonkoKevin

Two new polls from American Research Group are dominating people’s attention as we are now less than a week away from the Iowa caucuses.  According to the ARG poll, Hillary Clinton has a commanding lead over John Edwards 34 to 20 percent, with Barack Obama in third at 19% and Joe Biden at 8%.  In the Republican race, Mike Huckabee maintained a slim but diminishing lead over Mitt Romney 23 to 21 percent, with a surging John McCain at 17%, Rudy Giuliani at a surprising 14%, and Ron Paul at 10%, ahead of Fred Thompson. (more…)

by WonkoKevin

Back to the tea leaves, this time to predict the Republican Iowa caucus, now less than 12 days away.  Most of our scenarios have Mike Huckabee winning; that would be a tough one to bet against now.  Ditto, Mitt Romney in second.  Both polling and Wonkosphere data seem to support this 1-2 finish.  How much by, and who comes in third and fourth and last is much more difficult to predict.  (more…)