by WonkoKevin

I stepped out of my self-imposed boycott of commenting on anything outside the presidential campaign and used our technology to analyze Bush’s State of the Union speech–last night’s and the ones before it.  I found a progression of four Bushs: The Domestic Bush (2001), The Security Bush (2002-03), The Vision Bush (2004-07), and The Legacy Bush (2008).  For the full story please visit Chris Wilson’s story at Slate:

http://www.slate.com/id/2183005/nav/tap3/

by WonkoKevin

The popular metaphor right now, in both parties, is the circular firing squad. Candidates are spending more time shooting each other and less time attacking the other side (except if the target is Hillary Clinton, that is). Democrats are worrying the Clinton-Obama mud throwing will disrupt an already planned-for Fall victory party (as if Obama or Clinton supporters are not going to show up or will vote Republican otherwise, yeah…), and Republicans see Mitt Romney fighting a two-front, nasty war with both John McCain and Mike Huckabee. Well, the candidates and their campaigns may be being mean to each other, but it ain’t so in the Wonkosphere. It’s downright nice these days! Oh, it’s been nasty, but most bloggers’ attentions seem to have turned towards being cheerleaders rather than critics.

(more…)

by WonkoKevin

Blogs are not the only social media influencing the campaign. Here are the candidates’ most watched videos on YouTube:

Hillary Clinton–Vote Different (the Apple commercial spoof), 4.3M views

John Edwards–Feeling Pretty, 1.1M views

Rudy Giuliani–Rudy Giuliani in Drag Smooching Donald Trump, 580,000 views

Mike Huckabee–Mike Huckabee Responds to Evolution Question, 2.2M views

John McCain–How Do We Beat the Bitch?, 1.0M views

Barack Obama–Obama Girl, 5.4M views

Ron Paul–Ron Paul Ad, 3.2M views

Mitt Romney–Romney Girls Attack Obama Girl, 600,000 views

by WonkoSteve

This article by Chris Mooney in the latest Columbia Journalism Review predicts a blogger’s union not too far in the future. Sounds like a natural for the liberals, but could we expect anyone in the conservative Wonkosphere to join?

by WonkoSteve

Shortly after the New Hampshire primary, posts were floating around  about possible vote fraud because of unusual patterns in machine-voting results.  Yesterday, Jon Stokes posted what seems like a pretty sober analysis at the Ars Technica blog.  It seems that the “patterns” people were seeing in the numbers were the result of incomplete counts and that the resulting incomplete conclusions were amplified as they flew around the Wonkosphere.  As Stokes wryly puts it:

 The Internet is full of people who have four things that make them dangerous, both to would-be election fraudsters and (paradoxically) to the larger cause of election integrity: computers, intermediate math skills, a mix of patriotic and entrepreneurial zeal, and the ability to publish in the blink of an eye. When you add a stream of evolving vote tallies to this mix and shake vigorously, the resulting concoction will produce lots and lots of foam.

In the end he says that when you skim the foam there is still a correlation between who won a precinct and its vote-counting method, but ir remains to be seen whether some other variable accounts for it.

The real problem, according to Stokes, is that because 34 states don’t require a verifiable paper trail and/or random audit of results, there is a significant danger of a repeat of this controversy in other primaries and especially in the fall general elections.

by WonkoKevin

They’re not ignoring him–yet–but conservative and liberal bloggers alike have turned negative on Ron Paul.  It’s the same pattern as we saw in Wonkosphere with Mike Huckabee: positive on the personality and ideology, negative on the policies.  So once specific policies start getting unearthed, bloggers attack.  I also think that fans of the other candidates are negative on the votes that Paul is taking (and will continue to take) in the primaries.  Who would Paul voters vote for if he weren’t in?  I suppose Thompson’s federalism is as close to Paul’s libertarianism as any, but I think for the most part that these voters would otherwise be staying home.

The graph below shows the tone of posts about Paul over the past 14 days (conservative=red and liberal=blue).  The grey band represents the mean (for that day) plus and minus one standard deviation, so if you’re below the band it means the tone is significantly negative.  Further, our experience shows anything less than 0.10 is trouble.  At this point, I think Paul is going to pull 5-10% in any primary he runs in.  I don’t see it going up or down, regardless of blogger buzz to the contrary. 

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.

(more…)

by WonkoSteve

The answer is yes.  A survey of reporters by Brodeur, reported here,  says:

• The biggest impact of blogs is in the speed and availability of news
• Blogs have a significant impact on the “tone”  and “editorial direction” of news reporting
• Blogs are a regular source for journalists
• Journalists are increasingly active participants in the blogosphere
• About half of reporters say they are “lurkers”

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

Whoa.  Didn’t see that coming.  But on a day when even some in the Clinton camp itself predicted a 12-15 point loss, I guess it’s OK to have blown the Obama NH prediction.  Nothing in Wonkosphere data appears to have suggested this.  As a gentle and historical reminder of what the buzz was like the day before Hillary came back from dead, here are some of the headlines from our buzz column today, Jan 8 2008. (more…)