by WonkoKevin
John McCain has pulled out to a large lead in Wonkosphere buzz share, ahead of Barack Obama by 62 to 38 percent. If the debate doesn’t happen, this will likely continue. If the debate does happen, it will be interesting to see if he retains the lead in blogosphere attention.
by WonkoKevin
It’s always so easy to tell when my students plaguerize. All I need to do is take a full sentence from their text and stick it into Google and see what comes up. Today’s plaguerized text of the day is spreading the rumor that Joe Biden will step down and Hillary Clinton will step in as VP. Here’s the anonymous email being passed around (sometimes it’s appropriately cited and sometimes it’s simply portrayed as though written by the blogger on the site):
Let me share some info with you that I have gotten from excellent sources within the DNC: On or about October 5th, Biden will excuse himself from the ticket, citing health problems, and he will be replaced by Hillary. This is timed to occur after the VP debate on 10/2. There have been talks all weekend about how to proceed with this info. generally, the feeling is that we should all go ahead and get it out there to as many blog sites and personal email lists as is possible. I have already seen a few short blurbs about this - the “health problem” cited in those articles was aneurysm. Probably many of you have heard the same rumblings. However, at this point, with this inside info from the DNC, it looks like this Obama strategy will be a go. Therefore, it seems that the best strategy is to get out in front of this Obama maneuver, spell it out in detail, and thereby expose it for the grand manipulation that it is. So, let’s start mixing this one up and cut the Obamites off at the pass - send this info out to as many people as you can - post about it on websites and blogs, etc.
When I did a Google search on “biden ‘probably many of you have heard the same rumblings’” I got 582 hits. I find it terribly interesting that almost all of the discussion concerning the email is whether it strategically makes sense, rather than whether it’s true. There’s an almost working assumption the email must be real and that Obama’s meeting with Clinton in Harlem was were the devil deal was made.
The analysis I’ve found that I got the biggest kick out of was from Death by 1000 Papercuts. “Mondo” does a detailed examination of Obama and McCain’s web sites and merchandise stores and smells something funny; while McCain was quick to add Palin to the web site and merchanside, there is almost no Obama-Biden merchandise available:
Thinking, “this is how rumors get started,” a little road trip seemed to be in order. If Joe Biden were not the solid VP pick–and due to be replaced in the rumored “October Surprise”–it would seem that there wouldn’t be much of an investment made by the Obama campaign in Obama-Biden campaign materials and merchandise. We visited three Obama campaign offices in three different states, called several others in a few states picked at random and checked out Barackobama.com’s online store to see what the situation was. There seemed to be plenty of campaign material for Barack Obama, sans Biden. In fact, “Obama-Biden” didn’t seem to be much on display at all in any of the offices.
It’s been nearly a month since Barack Obama named Joe Biden as his vice-presidential pick: what’s the hold-up with the Obama-Biden campaign materials? Why is there almost no Obama-Biden merchandise available? This is a candidate whose campaign has planned for this race for months–some would say years. As was stated, there is no end to the “Only Obama” campaign materials.
Joyce, in the Portland OR Obama office told us that, “No one has any (Obama-Biden campaign merchandise). We don’t have any Obama-Biden stuff. The national campaign says it’s sold out and back-ordered. It’ll be about two weeks until we get any.” Two weeks? That would place the date around the 4th or 5th of October, incidentally.
We talked to Paul in the Washington PA Obama office–which was busy at the time–and he told us that there wasn’t any Obama-Biden signs, t-shirts or stickers in that office, at least right now. We were told that there were “some Obama-Biden buttons. We’re asking a $50 donation for them.” … Dan, at the Belmont office in Bellaire OH, said, “No, we don’t have any Obama-Biden signs or T-shirts. They’re supposed to be coming in the next couple weeks.”
by WonkoKevin
Barack Obama took the lead in Wonkosphere buzz share today, 54 to 45% over John McCain. McCain had held a lead in buzz share since the Republican convention, first peaking at around 65% immediately after Sarah Palin’s speech. It has been 52-48 McCain-Obama for the last week.
Lots of mud being thrown. In terms of the tone of the buzz, liberal bloggers have been very positive as of late on Obama and conservative very negative; conservative and liberal bloggers have a much more similar tone on McCain right now, neutral. The McCain campaign has been moderately negative about Obama in content but the impact is volume–they’re saturating their feeds with Obama material. The Obama campaign still has significantly less to say about McCain in its own feeds, but McCain mentions by Obama have increased noticeably in the past 3 days.
by WonkoKevin
John McCain’s buzz share in Wonkosphere has gone back to the pre-conventions level of 40%, with Obama at 60%. During the Democratic convention, Obama’s buzz share peaked over 80%, and dropped to 55% when Sarah Palin’s candidacy was announced. McCain’s buzz share peaked 75% on the day after Palin’s speech, and actually came down 15% the day after his own speech. Note that much of Obama’s buzz continues to come from conservative bloggers.
by WonkoKevin
Some of you out in the Wonksophere may have noticed that while Obama’s mud level (how much negative language he uses when talking about McCain) has been consistently lower than McCain’s mud level, the actual volume of statements from one about the other has been drastically different. McCain’s press releases and published speeches average about 10 Obama mentions a day, while Obama’s mentions of McCain’s average maybe 1 per day. The difference is caused by their definition of ”press release”. In Obama’s case, only statements by Obama himself are being pushed as press releases, and he almost never mentions McCain in these statements. McCain’s campaign repackages or redistributes news stories or editorials by other media and counts it as a press release, and those tend to be heavy negative on Obama. As a quasi-journalist, I don’t think it’s correct for McCain to be calling these redistributions “press releases”. On the other hand, the public and media don’t care what they’re called, and it represents an advantage to McCain.
by WonkoSteve
AP is reporting that the Obama campaign is basking in the glory of their convention success and the controversy surrounding the Palin nomination. Accordingly, they are “making no effort to shake things up or to make national news,” focusing on local coverage of their campaign events instead.
Apparently their strategy also includes avoiding blog buzz. Obama has been on a steady downward trend in buzz share since August 23rd. He currenty stands at 34%, which is the lowest number we can remember seeing since way back when Hillary was still inevitable.
by WonkoKevin
If one of John McCain’s objectives in picking Sarah Palin as VP was to stop the Obama news cycle, Wonkosphere can report: mission accomplished. Obama’s buzz share in both liberal and conservative realms had been in the 60% range, peaking around 75% earlier in the week. Over the last 24 hours, McCain now leads Obama in buzz share 60-40, effectively turning the tables on Obama’s convention bump. We assume with the events of next week McCain will maintain or even increase this lead, knocking attention away from Obama for a good ten days. The Republicans hope that all the upcoming attention is positive.
by WonkoSteve
The more observant among you will notice that we’ve made a change to the Wonkosphere home page and have added a new Mud Meter tab. This is a reprise of a similar service we ran during the 2004 election, to keep track of who is saying more negative things about their opponent from day to day.
The calculations are based on press releases and speech transcripts from the candidates’ official web sites. The Mud Meter shows, on a 1 to 10 scale, how negative the language is in sentences mentioning the opponent. The value is an average over the previous week.
The Mud Meter tab shows these values for each candidate over the last 30 days, as well as the number of mentions. It also gives influential words each candidate is associating with the other over the last week.
The story so far is that Obama is just not mentioning McCain very much, compared to McCain’s mentions of Obama. OTOH it appears that he got the message from disgruntled dems about not hitting back hard enough, considering the large jump in his mud meter value over the last week or so.
We have also noticed that Obama’s campaign doesn’t seem to be nearly as conscientious about updating their web site as McCain’s. How strange, given that Obama is supposed to be the hipster and has a more sophisticated web operation in other ways.
Because there are only two candidates people are seriously talking about anymore, we also replaced the bar chart showing buzz share with a pie chart showing McCain, Obama, and all other candidates.
Enjoy! And watch this space for more analysis of the Mud Meter and comparisons to the 2004 campaign.
by WonkoKevin
According to Wonksophere buzz share data, Barack Obama has gotten about a 20% increase in buzz share since the Democratic convention began. Obama is pulling down 75% of the total buzz about the presidential candidates, John McCain is at 24%, and Ron Barr at 1%. Sentiment about Obama and McCain has remained constant, but the volume of bloggers has exploded. Whereas the total number of blog posts tracked by Wonkosphere is normally in the 1500 range (about one post per blog per day), this week the daily average has been in the 2500 range, a 66% increase in volume.
by WonkoKevin
Hello all, I know it’s been forever and a day since we’ve been around. Time to get back into the numbers.John McCain is pulling close to Barack Obama in projected electoral votes, according to a relatively new political web site called FiveThirtyEight.com (538=number of electoral votes). The site in run by Nate Silver, who is a sabermatician–concerned more typically about baseball statistics than election polling. According to Silver, his method differs from others in several ways:
Firstly, we assign each poll a weighting based on that pollster’s historical track record, the poll’s sample size, and the recentness of the poll. More reliable polls are weighted more heavily in our averages.Secondly, we include a regression estimate based on the demographics in each state among our ‘polls’, which helps to account for outlier polls and to keep the polling in its proper context.Thirdly, we use an inferential process to compute a rolling trendline that allows us to adjust results in states that have not been polled recently and make them ‘current’.Fourthly, we simulate the election 10,000 times for each site update in order to provide a probabilistic assessment of electoral outcomes based on a historical analysis of polling data since 1952. The simulation further accounts for the fact that similar states are likely to move together, e.g. future polling movement in states like Michigan and Ohio, or North and South Carolina, is likely to be in the same direction.
His method has Obama at 272.3 and McCain at 265.7, and Ohio is the swing state. His scenario simulations give Obama only a 17.9% chance of winning if he loses Ohio, whereas McCain is given a 0.42% chance–less than 1 out of 200–of winning the election if he loses Ohio. Pollster.com currently has Obama up 45.6% to 43.9% in Ohio.
