by WonkoKevin

It was supposed to be over by now. In fact, back in March 2007, most bloggers were dreading this portion of the campaign season, for it represented the long haul between knowing who the two candidates were and the corresponding conventions. What the hell was there going to be to talk about? A few dreamers told us to consider the possibility that it wouldn’t be over by Super Tuesday, but who believed them? Certainly not the states, who ran over each other this year to be early. Michigan and Florida were so convinced that it would be over by Feb 5 they gambled their convention seating; nice move. Well, be careful what you wish for because now we have it–the campaign that won’t stop. Unless Clinton gets beat 60-40 in PA, this looks to be going all the way to the convention, and given the lateness of selecting a Democrat, the ensuing rush to November will be all the more intense. Bloggers and other politicos not only are going to miss spring break this week, they’re going to be going on summer vacations with their Blackberries close in hand.

So given that Obama and Clinton are going to continue to duke it out for months, what’s next? What happens when a conversation goes on way too long? Here are five things that happen in person-to-person conversations that go beyond their limit; I imagine the same will happen between both the candidates and their respective bloggers.

1. Obsessive loops–you keep on saying the same thing, over and over and over again. This is part of…

2. Go on auto-pilot. Everything is routinized so as to make it to the next day.

3. Say stupid things; also see: Say too much.

4. Tit for tat, see also: She said, he said.

5. No time to think–when all you’re doing is verbal tennis, who has time to think of something worthwhile to say?

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

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

John McCain has reached new heights in conservative Wonkosphere buzz, clocking in at 58% yesterday, compared to Romney’s 28%.  The race, as far as conservative bloggers are concerned, is down to McCain v. Romney, as they cornered 86% of all their attention.  Ditto is happening on the liberal side, with Clinton and Obama accounting for 85% of liberal buzz and 60% of total buzz after Obama’s overwhelming win in South Carolina.   McCain’s 58% is the highest one-day conservative buzz share we have seen this campaign season, beating Ron Paul’s 50% level which he hit in November.  Buzz share is a zero-sum game, so if McCain is surging it must mean others are hurting, and indeed they are.  Mike Huckabee’s drop is the most shocking, as he’s gone from a respectable 20% ten days ago to 3%.  Three percent!  Huckabee’s rode the blogosphere buzz train into the MSM spotlight, so this decline is likely a death march into Ignoredom.  Rudy Giuliani, who had spent five days above 10%, fell to 6%, and Ron Paul has been under 10% for the last three weeks.  The conservative blogosphere is now McCain’s to lose. 

by WonkoKevin

My predictions for the caucus and primary today are not based on any Wonkosphere hard data; as I’ve mentioned before, I think we’ve gone past the point where blogs are either future-predictive or insightful to the mood of a particular primary state, like Nevada or South Carolina. This may change come Tsunami Tuesday… My instinct is Clinton and Romney in Nevada, and Huckabee in South Carolina. The worry from Huck’s camp is snow in the northern area of the state where he is strongest. I could go on to say, “A McCain victory will mean…” or “If Edwards can get over 20% in Nevada…”, but I won’t. Who the heck knows anymore? Much to my (and probably your) delight, the electorate doesn’t seem to want the primaries to end. They’re not ready to select. When I talk to conservatives and liberals alike, they seem to change their mind daily about who they will pull the lever for. I myself change day by day–I don’t have anyone’s sign in my yard (I’m in Arizona, which votes Feb 5) because my wife and I can’t stay with our choice for more than two days in a row! As Chuck Todd at MSNBC said yesterday, March 4 may be the big day, when Texas and Ohio vote. According to USAElectionPolls, an IVR poll conducted on November 8 gave Clinton a 51-17 advantage in Texas, while the same poll gave Giuliani a slight but unsafe lead–basically it’s a toss-up on the Republican side. A December 1 Quinnipiac University poll gave Clinton a 45-19 lead over Obama in Ohio, and Giuliani a 29-13 lead over McCain. Of course, these are all pre- Obama and McCain and Huckabee and Romney wins, so those polls might not mean much now.

by WonkoKevin

OK, maybe I am being generous, maybe a B would be more realistic but it was only that one problem I missed…Here’s a comparison of my predictions to the actual outcomes in New Hampshire, actual shown in parens:

Dems: Obama 42 (36), Clinton 33 (39), Edwards 19 (17), Richardson 5 (5), Kucinich 1 (1)

Reps: McCain 35 (37), Romney 31 (32), Huckabee 12 (11), Giuliani 10 (9), Paul 10 (8), Thompson 2 (1)

As I mentioned, there was no evidence of a Clinton upset in the Wonkosphere data.  Clinton’s buzz share had in fact been going up, but it was almost all from negative posts.  Bloggers got it wrong because pollers got it wrong, and pollers got it wrong because of many reasons, the most significant and important being Clinton’s gender bonus.  I call it a “bonus” rather than a “gap” because there are more female voters, and Democratic voters, and females gave her a much bigger margin than males gave Obama.  Finally a Clinton narrative has begun to emerge, and it’s a gender narrative.

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 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 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.