by WonkoKevin

Data from Wonkosphere highlights the fact that amongst conservative bloggers there is a complete lack of consensus about what to talk about and focus attention on, except to be against Hillary Clinton. On the eve of a potential victory in New Hampshire, both John McCain and Mitt Romney’s buzz share went… DOWN. McCain dropped from 28 to 20%, and Romney from 30 to 27%. Both sides continued to pummel the other, perhaps spending more time doing that then talking up their own candidate, as both had significantly lower tone than the average. Fred Thompson also went down in buzz share to 5%. Who went up to compensate then? Ron Paul did, from 12 to 18%, and Duncan Hunter hit 5% for his comment about “knuckleheaded media execs”. Why are bloggers spending energy talking about Hunter? Conversely, if you look at this morning’s conservative buzz column, it’s filled with posts about Clinton’s crying game. Remember, the buzz column is generated automatically by our computers, and looks for those stories that are most representative of the whole. If there’s a “clique” of tightly-related posts they will tend to get more favor in our algorithm. Today’s results indicate that there is a lot of consensus and activity amongst conservative bloggers in talking about Clinton, but no consensus or “clique” when it comes to talking about the Republican candidates. Continued ennui. On the Democratic side, I don’t see anything in the Wonkosphere data to change my NH prediction from yesterday (Obama 42, Clinton 33, Edwards 19), but my intuition is that the events of yesterday may bite into Clinton’s 33 some.

by WonkoSteve and WonkoKevin

Wonkosphere volume has exploded as the primary season has begun.  The number of blogs that we are tracking in our directory has only slightly increased–we add a couple of new blogs each day–but the number of posts by the blogs in the directory has increased by over two-fold.  The graph below shows the number of total blog posts we tracked, daily from December until yesterday.  We can see that Saturdays and Sundays typically are down days and Wednesdays usually have the highest volume, further support of our theory that political bloggers are either doing it full time, or use it as a substitute for working rather than as “relaxation” and as a hobby on the weekend.  More striking however is the increase in volume on January 2, moving from an average volume of about 1000 per day to 2000 per day.  As mentioned previously, this represents a new phase of the Wonkosphere, and one in which candidate-only blogs will have diminishing influence on Wonkosphere numbers.

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.

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

One of the more surprising things to happen this campaign season is something that hasn’t happened–the emergence of the Hillary Clinton narrative. Despite being the center of attention for so long, or perhaps because of it, there is no exciting vision attached to her candidacy, manifest as bloggers continue to turn their attention to Obama and Edwards and away from Clinton. Clinton’s Wonkosphere liberal buzz share was in the low 20’s for the sixth straight day, while Obama remained steady and Edward’s buzz turned super-positive; Obama also benefitted from Dennis Kucinich’s announcement that his supporters should vote for Obama as second choice.

Bloggers and MSM rap on the hope of a Obama presidency and what it would mean for racial relations in the country, and the populist anti-corporate message of Edwards… and the promise of constitutionalism in a Ron Paul presidency, and of a return to true federalism in a Thompson administration, and of tough action against terrorist by Rudy… Where is the talk of idealism when bloggers talk about Clinton? Bloggers have paid lots of attention to Clinton’s words, policies, personality, and history (as well they should), but have not correspondingly talked about what it would mean to finally have a female president, or what it means to continue the Clinton-Bush dynasty. Instead Clinton stands out as the ultimate pragmatist amongst a field of relative idealists. For bloggers, it’s a lot more interesting to pay attention to the idealists right now. Democrats have a recent habit however of turning away from the idealist at the last moment, and going with the pragmatist who can manage the micromarkets that make up the Democratic party.

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 WonkoSteve

For those Wonkospherians interested in their place in history, here is an interesting post by Andy Carvin at NPR called “The Evolution of the Blog.” The first part is a standard Internet timeline. But then Carvin pegs this year as the 10-year anniversary of the blog:

December 1997: Jorn Barger starts a daily log of interesting Web links published in reverse chronological order, calling it Robot Wisdom WebLog. The term “Weblog” is soon generalized by other online publishers to include any page with frequent short posts in reverse chronological order.

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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

With only two weeks to go before the Iowa caucuses, there are subtle hints that momentum is shifting from Barack Obama to John Edwards.  Is Wonkosphere buzz share across all the internet still meaningful when it comes down to state-level opinions?  You bet–bloggers are the ones who are digesting the daily poll numbers and paying close attention to what each other are saying as well as what mainstream media is saying.  Buzz share at this point in the horse race relates to how bloggers are interpreting the buzz out of Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina.  Thus it is our belief that changes in buzz share over the last week or two may have predictive power concerning what will happen on January 3, in the same manner that buzz share has been predictive of poll numbers throughout the rest of the race.  Numbers are below the fold.

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by WonkoKevin

Both conservative and liberal bloggers have been pounding away at Mike Huckabee now for two weeks.  According to Wonkosphere data, the sentiment of Huckabee’s buzz is lower than any other competitive candidate over this two week period.  What is Huck’s response?  A Christmas commercial (prediction: it will work amongst older voters; the YouTube crowd has only given it two stars out of five in over 2200 reviews).  In my humble opinion people are still underestimating Hope 2.0. 

Conversely, Joe Biden and Chris Dodd both were talked of very positively by liberal bloggers this past week, and the tone of Hillary Clinton’s buzz over the last three days has come back to normal after two weeks of low values, so maybe she’s shored up things a bit with the Des Moines Register endorsement.  Amongst conservative bloggers, Rudy Giuliani’s buzz was positive over the last 2 days, also following a 2 week plus period of negative attention.