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

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

Most of the trends in Wonkosphere buzz share and sentiment that have arisen in the past week stayed with us yesterday.  McCain, Thompson, and Obama continue at their relatively higher levels of buzz share; Biden remains constant in 4th place amongst Dems; Paul and Giuliani remain relatively lower; and Dodd, Kucinich, Hunter, Gravel, Keyes, and Richardson continue to not register much.  The two significant changes that did occur in the last 24 hours were that Clinton and Edwards swapped 5% buzz share (Clinton up, Edwards down), and so did Romney (up) and Huckabee (down).  At this stage, a one day change of 5% is not all that significant given historical levels of volatility.  Romney’s tone has also been higher the last two days and Huckabee’s hasn’t, perhaps indicating a further tightening of the race (could it be any tighter?).

I made my predictions two weeks ago.  I’ll make some more–if you make enough predictions one of them is bound to come out accurate:

Obama 33, Edwards 31, Clinton, 26

Huckabee 32, Romney 28, McCain 18, Paul 10, Thompson 8

by WonkoKevin

The conservative Wonkosphere continued to focus most of its attention on Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney, the two front-runners in the upcoming Iowa caucus. Both are kind of hobbling into the finish line though–most of the attention to both of them is strongly negative, and this negativity has gone on for the last 3 weeks. Couple this with the fact that the buzz on all the other candidates is going down (Giuliani at 4% buzz share; McCain down in buzz share last 3 days; Ron Paul down for 7 straight days; Thompson below 10% again), and what you seem to have is a lot of ennui amongst conservative bloggers. IF we assume that conservative bloggers yesterday are of similar sentiment to conservative voters in Iowa, then we might predict low turnout, which helps Huckabee, probably helps Paul challenge for third place.