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

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 WonkoSteve

This morning our servers are overheating with a barrage of negative McCain posts, and we are receiving many mails about it, some claiming that we are favoring Romney.

McCain supporters out there, please keep in mind the following:

1. Wonkosphere doesn’t favor any candidate.
2. All our posts are selected automatically, based on the same algorithms we’ve been running since August.  We do not select any posts by hand.
3. Buzz posts are selected to best reflect the current content of all posts ending at the time of the last update.  The buzz is what it is, and today it’s heavily negative on McCain.
4. The posts on a candidate’s page are those that are a combination of the most recent and where the candidate’s name is most influential (most structures the text) and attack posts are likely to meet those conditions.   We can only display so many posts, and when the traffic is heavy like it is today, it is possible that you won’t find a single positive post about a given candidate.
5. We don’t make any guarantee that the posts are favorable to the candidate or are by a candidate’s bloggers.  Usually they’re not; see Clinton’s page for another example.
6. Heavy negative traffic on McCain, especially also involving Romney, is not surprising given current reports that Romney is going heavily negative on McCain.
7. The solution to this is for McCain bloggers to return fire en masse.

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.

(more…)

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.

(more…)

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.

(more…)

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…)