Ron Paul rises, but Hillary Clinton surprises; Wonkosphere.com reports that buzz share results for September indicate the possibility of a wild campaign season.

(PRWEB) October 8, 2007 — Texas representative and Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul lived up to his Internet fame in September. Wonkosphere.com has reported that Paul finished in first place amongst Republican candidates for buzz share from conservative bloggers. Buzz share measures how much the political blogosphere is talking about a particular candidate, and Paul’s 16% beat out Senator Fred Thompson (13%) and Mayor Rudy Giuliani (10%). The real untold story however of Internet politics in September is bloggers’ obsession with New York Senator Hillary Clinton.

In September, approximately one out of every four blog posts that talked about a presidential candidate talked about Senator Clinton. “Clinton (22%) barely beat out John Edwards (20%) for buzz share amongst liberal bloggers,” said Wonkosphere’s Kevin Dooley, “but she was all conservative bloggers could talk about — she had more conservative buzz share than Fred Thompson and Rudy Giuliani combined.”

“Senator Clinton’s dominance in the political blogosphere is important for three reasons,” added Wonkosphere’s Steve Corman. “First, it means she is succeeding in driving the discussion, which can be powerful. Second, because the race is being defined as Clinton versus Not-Clinton, it means that anyone on either side can potentially fill the contender role; the narrative is ‘Who will beat Hillary?’ Third, because conservative bloggers have concentrated on Clinton, their own Republican candidates have gone largely un-vetted by the blogging community.”

September Results Foretell Change
Because political bloggers tend to be thought-leaders in the political process, changes in candidate buzz share tend to be followed by changes in voter polls: the rise in Ron Paul and Mike Huckabee’s poll numbers, the resurgence of John McCain and John Edwards, and Mitt Romney’s recent dip all fit that pattern.

“Based on buzz share trends over the last couple of weeks, look for John Edwards to make a strong move for second place in the Democratic race, and expect Joe Biden’s numbers to increase,” said Dooley. “Amongst Republicans, expect Paul and Huckabee to pick up new voters and for Fred Thompson to lose some ground.” Corman added, “The elephant in the room is Al Gore. The Nobel Peace Prize is announced October 12 and some bloggers are predicting that a win will coincide with him jumping into the race. Then it’s really up for grabs.”

Amongst conservative bloggers, Mitt Romney (9%) came in fifth place in September buzz share, behind Clinton, Paul, Thompson, and Giuliani. Romney was followed by Barack Obama (5%), Mike Huckabee (5%), John McCain (5%), and John Edwards (5%). Amongst liberal bloggers, Barack Obama (13%) finished in third place in buzz share behind Clinton and Edwards, and was followed by Giuliani (11%), Thompson (7%), Biden (7%), McCain (5%), Romney (4%), Bill Richardson (3%), Chris Dodd (3%), and Paul (2%).

Technology makes measuring buzz share easy
The buzz share results come from Wonkosphere.com, a new web site which tracks and analyzes over 1200 political blogs each day. Patented technology from Arizona State University (ASU) is used to measure each candidate’s buzz share, as well as whether bloggers are ranting or raving about the candidate. Wonkosphere is operated by Crawdad Technologies, a new venture started by Corman and Dooley, who are also professors at ASU.

“We knew that the 2008 political campaign would be influenced in unpredictable ways by the Internet, “said Corman. “We created Wonkosphere.com as a way to give millions of political blog readers a way to stay on top of what was happening across the whole political blogosphere.”

“Technology allows us to keep track of hundreds of times more blogs than any individual has time to read,” added Dooley, “and it also allows the analysis to be completely unbiased, so that we can report what’s going on in a truly non-partisan fashion.”

(cross posted on Wonkoblog)

Ron Paul led all Republicans in Wonkosphere buzz share one day following Tavis Smiley’s PBS All American Presidential Forums. Paul’s buzz share amongst conservative bloggers increased from 14% to 21%, beating out Rudy Giuliani who fell below 20% buzz share for the first time in ten days. The forum was notable for its empty podia–the front runners were not there, which has peeved off more than a few conservatives. Bloggers tended to concede the debate to either Paul or Mike Huckabee, who got a 2% increase in buzz share from the event. Sam Brownback, Tom Tancredo, and Alan Keyes also has buzz share increases in the 2-3% range… The biggest “loser” of the event? Mitt Romney. Romney’s buzz share plummeted from 21% to 11%… For more discussion, Richard Rhodes has provided a nice analysis of the debate’s content.

John McCain had a most excellent day in Wonkosphere, increasing from 5% buzz share to 20% from conservative bloggers and 30% from liberal bloggers.  In a sign that his campaign may have some financial breathing room now, he is doing a “full buy” of TV and radio spots in New Hampshire.  The spots are largely biographical, and both feature pictures of McCain with Ronald Reagan.  “From our perspective we sensed this progress was occurring and wanted to capitalize on that, and continue to wage an aggressive and robust campaign by putting these ads up,” said campaign manager Rick Davis.

To back up Davis, take a look at Rasmussen’s New Hampshire data on positive v. negative sentiment:

• John McCain 54% / 44% (+10%)
• Hillary Clinton 44% / 54% (-10%)
• Rudy Giuliani 51% / ~47% (~ +4%)
• Mitt Romney 46% / ~52% (~ -6%)
• Fred Thompson 40% / ~54% (~ -14%)

Here are the texts for McCain’s spots:

Script for “One Man” (60 seconds TV)
INTERVIEWER: How old are you?
JOHN MCCAIN: Thirty-one
INTERVIEWER: What is your rank in the Army?
JOHN MCCAIN: Lt. Commander in the Navy … Hit by either missile or anti-aircraft fire, I’m not sure which. I ejected and broke my leg and both arms.
INTERVIEWER: And your official number?
JOHN MCCAIN: 624787
ANNOUNCER: One man sacrificed for his country
One man opposed a flawed strategy in Iraq
One man had the courage to call for change
One man didn’t play politics with the truth
One man stands up to the special interests
JOHN MCCAIN: Stand up. We’re Americans, we’re Americans and we’ll never surrender. They will.
ANNOUNCER: One man does what’s right, not what’s easy
John McCain
JOHN MCCAIN: I’m John McCain and I approve this message.
 
Script for “Live Free” (:30-TV)
ANNOUNCER: America at risk
Americans lost trust in their government
They’re looking for leadership
A leader with the judgment and experience to keep us safe
The courage to change Washington
Fix our toughest problems and restore our trust
The character to put America’s interests before his own
New Hampshire, you know who he is:
JOHN MCCAIN: Live free or die!
ANNOUNCER: John McCain
JOHN MCCAIN: I’m John McCain and I approve this message.
 
Script for “Courage” (60 seconds RADIO)
ANNOUNCER: John McCain, prisoner of war, Hanoi, 1967:
INTERVIEWER: How old are you?
JOHN MCCAIN: Thirty-one
INTERVIEWER: What is your rank in the Army?
JOHN MCCAIN: Lt. Commander in the Navy … Hit by either missile or anti-aircraft fire, I’m not sure which. I ejected and broke my leg and both arms.
INTERVIEWER: And your official number?
JOHN MCCAIN: 624787
ANNOUNCER: One man believes Americans want a leader, not a follower
“No other candidate has the guts to do the same,” wrote the Union Leader
One man has the courage to stand up to the special interests
And the judgment and experience to be commander in chief
New Hampshire, you know who he is:
JOHN MCCAIN: Live free or die!
ANNOUNCER: John McCain
JOHN MCCAIN: I’m John McCain and I approve this message.

It was exciting watching everyone get so pumped up about Fred Thompson’s announcement into the race… even the timing of it, choosing Leno over the debate, made for some good buzz.  Now Wonkosphere is starving for some Fred Thompson buzz.  His campaign schedule has been light, and there have been no large policy pronouncements.  A graph of the last two weeks of Thompson’s buzz share amongst conservative (and liberal) bloggers shows it has plummeted from 30% to now below 10%.  Dude–go forth with all haste and be newsworthy!

In what has to be a first in the political blogosphere, presidential candidate Mike Huckabee invited candidate-on-the-edge-of-announcing Newt Gingrich to guest-post on his blog.  Conservative bloggers responded well, keeping Huckabee over the 10% line in Wonkosphere buzz share yesterday.  As I discussed yesterday, Huckabee’s buzz share is important not only because it means attention to him, but is also tends to mean attention away from Thompson and McCain, which is what happened yesterday: McCain continued to plummet in buzz share.  

Here’s what Gingrich announced in Huckabee’s blog:

American Solutions for Winning the Future is a unique, non-partisan organization dedicated to empowering the American people to develop and sustain this movement for real change. As Chairman of American Solutions, I am asking you to join me on the evening of September 27th from 7:00 – 8:30 p.m. ET when we will kick off the inaugural Solutions Day live from the Cobb Galleria in Atlanta, Georgia, broadcast on DirecTV (channel 577), the Dish Satellite Network (channel 219), and on www.AmericanSolutions.com.   (Don’t worry, that leaves enough time to watch Gov. Huckabee participate in the All American Presidential Forum on PBS at 9:00 p.m. ET). 

Then on September 29th, you can join your fellow citizens at sites across the country for free online workshops, including one by Gov. Huckabee designed to tap into the energy and creativity of the American people. Together, we will begin to develop solutions for every level of government for the most pressing challenges facing the country.

Huckabee himself will be presenting “Transforming Education with Art, Music, and Personalized Learning; Transforming Health Care with Wellness and Ownership”:

We need art and music in all our schools — the Weapons of Mass instruction — to give our children the tools they need to compete in the 21st Century.  We also need to transform education by offering personalized learning that lets students design their curricula to reflect their passions and ambitions.  We must transform our health care model to focus on prevention and earlier diagnosis and treatment.  We must move from employer-based health care to consumer-based health care.  These changes will bring down costs and make health care portable, thus making it more accessible.

Huckabee plays bass in the band Capitol Offense, which according to their MySpace page plays hits such as Born to Be Wild, Fortunate Son, Jailhouse Rock, Freebird, Twist and Shout, I Want to Hold Your Hand, Dock of the Bay, Brown Eyed Girl, Taking Care of Business, Beautiful Tonight, Honky Tonk Woman, Joy to the World, Roll Over Beethoven, and House of the Rising Sun…  Hey, three chords works pretty well–heck, Lou Reed only needs one! 

We know that to some extent buzz share in Wonkosphere is a zero sum game–if bloggers are talking about candidate X they’re less likely to also be talking about candidate Y.  If we go back to June and examine buzz share amongst conservative bloggers, Mike Huckabee appears to be at the center of this complex dynamic of one candidate’s buzz eating into another’s. 

When buzz share on Huckabee goes up, buzz on John McCain and Fred Thompson goes way down; conversely if McCain or Thompson go up, Huckabee goes down drastically.  Mitt Romney has the same relationship: if Romney buzz share goes up, McCain’s and Thompson’s buzz shares go way down, and if McCain or Thompson go up in buzz, it kills buzz on Romney.  Huckabee also has a unique positive correlation with both Ron Paul and Mitt Romney; if Huckabee goes up or down in buzz, so do Paul and Romney.  Finally, Paul and Giuliani appear to trade buzz.

What does this mean in terms of the horse race? 

1. Rudy Giuliani’s buzz share is mostly his making, for good or bad.  Giuliani, like Hillary Clinton, is talked about almost regardless of what he does.

2. Conservative bloggers, for now, appear to be trading off McCain and Thompson with Huckabee and Romney.   

3. Supporters of McCain and Thompson don’t overlap much except they don’t like Romney or Huckabee.  Supporters of Romney and Huckabee tend to be thinking more in the same direction, and are united in their dislike of McCain and Thompson.

Looking at how liberal bloggers discuss the Republican candidates, we have a different dynamic.  Specifically, when liberal bloggers are ranting on Giuliani, they’re are not ranting on McCain, and visa versa.  When they are ranting on Romney, they are not ranting on Fred Thompson, and visa versa.  I think this has to do with timing.  Basically, when McCain was having “trouble” in August, liberal bloggers piled on and ignored Giuliani.  Similarly, when Thompson entered the race, liberal bloggers stopped paying attention to Romney and instead paid attention to Thompson.

Mike Huckabee got a bump in Wonkosphere buzz share yesterday, getting 12% buzz share from conservative bloggers who were pumped over Huckabee’s speech to the NRA this week.  From the National Review Online, “Fred wowed ‘em, the crowd loved McCain’s rejoinder to the Code Pink protester, Mitt Romney’s video went over well, and Rudy Giuliani earned their respect. But the guy who absolutely looked the most at home before the NRA today was probably Mike Huckabee. Beginning with a jab at Rosie O’Donnell, and saying that because he was underdressed, he felt “as out of place as George Soros at an American Legion post”, Huckabee used humor and homespun anecdotes to prove his bona fides as “one of them.”  As Kevin Tracy points out, it was both the message and the delivery of it which have conservatives excited about Huckabee: “So when I make bold statements saying Huckabee is a better communicator than Reagan, this is one of many examples I can point to. I’m really thrilled to see that those in attendance at the NRA function appreciated Huckabee’s skills as a communicator as much as many of us at the grassroots level do.”

Four out of the top 5 positions in Wonkosphere buzz share were held by Republican today.  Amongst conservative bloggers, Ron Paul, Rudy Giuliani, Fred Thompson, and Mitt Romney were all at about 20% buzz share.  The Detroit Free Press reports that Ron Paul supporters arrived en masse to the state’s biennial Republican Party convention.  Thompson supporters point to three polls showing Fred tied or leading in three early states (Michigan, South Carolina, and Florida), and were enthusiastic about his appearance at the NRA; conversely, conservative bloggers were all over Giuliani’s comments at the same event.  Mitt Romney, who earlier this week released a lengthy policy statement, continues to focus on mass communications with a letter to Repubicans talking about “inflection points”.

Does our 9-11 narrative include a another path through New York in 2008?  Will the First Lady before 9-11 face-off with one of the strongest icons from 9-11?  If so, then perhaps we saw the first direct blow of the bout, with Rudy taking the opportunity to throw the first jab.  Rudy Guiliani’s full-page ad attacking Hillary Clinton’s defense of MoveOn.org’s own ad was the talk of Wonkosphere this week. 

Here at Wonkosphere we are pretty hyper about being non-partisan, so I won’t comment on the political aspects of either MoveOn or Giuliani’s ads.  But I would like to compare and contrast the effectiveness of them.

The context of all of this is MoveOn.org’s ad entitled General Petraeus or General Betray Us? Cooking the books for the White House.   The ad played to the base well and certainly generated a lot of buzz.  From MoveOn.org’s perspective, the ad did what it intended to do.  However, MoveOn.org’s goals are not necessarily one and the same with the Democratic party’s goals, and in this case their ad has caused (and will continue to cause) some headaches for Dems, especially Hillary Clinton.

I personally think the ad that Giuliani’s team came up with is a great piece of work, from a communication standpoint.  Let’s examine it.

The first thing our eye is drawn to is Petraeus’s picture.  Why did MoveOn choose this picture?  It does not make him look “untrustworthy”; in fact the uniform and angle give him an air of authority.  Next we see these strong anchors at the top and bottom, “suspension of disbelief” and “spewing political venom”.  Combined with the 9/11 framing, this evokes an emotional response from the reader.  There’s a nice simple summary of Petraeus’s record, establishing his experience and commitment, and then the whole thing is framed in a simple question.  Both 9-11 and defense images are invoked, which are considered Giuliani’s strengths.

What jumps out re design?  Note how the page is broken evenly into a top and bottom half, both of which contain about an equal amount of information.  The type face is big enough so that you can easily read it should the image be reproduced, and the whole thing can be read quickly. 

In summary, the ad doesn’t make you guess what its messages are.

Comparatively, the MoveOn ad uses up a tremendous amount of space showing a picture of Petraeus which does not convey an image of mistrust.  MoveOn’s text is all the same size so it makes you judge which sentence contains the important punch-line.  It takes too long to read.

This is exactly the same pattern that WonkoSteve and I saw during the 2004 presidential campaign.  Bush’s messages were simple and focused and Kerry’s messages were complex and intertwined.  Marketing 101 tells you which is more effective.

Mike Huckabee was the consensus winner in the Values Voters Debate held in Florida a couple of nights ago; we’re looking for a significant bump in Huckabee’s buzz share in Wonkosphere today. Participants included Huckabee, Reps. Tom Tancredo of Colorado, Duncan Hunter of California and Ron Paul of Texas, as well as Sen. Sam Browback of Kansas, Alan Keyes, and John Cox.  Huckabee won 64% of the delegates available in a kind-of Values Voters straw poll.

According to Kevin Tracy, “Mike Huckabee was clear, decisive, and official winner of last night’s Value Voters Debate. Out of the 340 conservative delegates, Mike Huckabee won 219! He won over over 100 delegates from the start of the night’s debate. Sam Brownback came in a distant 4th place with just 18 (after starting with 24). Ahead of Brownback were Alan Keyes in 3rd place with 24 votes and then Ron Paul in 2nd (yeah, I know) with 44 votes (after starting with 53). Duncan Hunter was the only other candidate to win delegates over during the debate, going from 8 to 13. Fred Thompson suffered the most, falling from 52 delegates to just 15.”  Right Wing News provides a play-by-play analysis.

Huckabee commented afterwards, ““We won huge,” said Huckabee after the votes were in. “I’m pleased, and proud, and honored to have this historic endorsement from America’s leading social conservatives who believe, as I do, in the core values which define American culture and life. This overwhelming vote affirms that conservatives are coalescing around one candidate and that candidate is me. Together, we will prevail.”

Missing from the debate were Romney, Giuliani, Thompson, and McCain: ““How can we expect these no-show candidates to take on Osama Bin Laden and other world leaders when they’re afraid to show up and answer questions from Phyllis Schlafly?” asked Rabbi Aryeh Spero of the Jewish Action Alliance, and Values Voter debate panelist. Rick Scarborough, President of Vision America, and Values Voter Debate Committee member added, “If you care about our votes, you need to care about our values enough to show up.”  All Democratic candidates have refused to participate in VV’s debate also.

The debate was not without contraversy.  Sam Brownback’s campaign made a statement afterwards criticizing Huckabee’s response to a question about support for governments which allow abortion, and Ron Paul supporters claim that a poll by WorldNet Daily shows Paul beating Huckabee 50% to 13%. 

While this may not be a watershed moment for Huckabee, the Fall has just begun and small victories can add up.

There’s a great article by Open Left entitled “Why National Polls Don’t Matter (A History)”.   The author argues convincingly that national polls, pre-Iowa and New Hampshire, mean little compared to the outcomes of the first two races: “On average New Hampshire causes a 33 point swing between the top-two candidates!!!  For example, going into Iowa, Dean was the front runner.  After the results in New Hampshire, he lost 11 points in the National Race while Kerry went up by 37 points.”

Chris Bowers uses the same argument to play out the scenario of how Hillary Clinton can be defeated, despire her current large lead in national polls: “The truth is, for all of Clinton’s national poll advantages, and all the strategizing that many people are engaging in, the path to defeating Hillary Clinton for the nomination is pretty straightforward: defeat her in Iowa and New Hampshire. The simple fact is that any candidate who does better than Clinton in those two states will almost certainly pass her in national polls, and thus probably take the nomination, while any candidate who loses to her in either of those states will almost certainly have no chance at the nomination.”

This has not gone unnoticed by the Obama campaign.

Let’s take a different tact… Let’s look at where national polls were in 2004 for the Democrats.  Data is from PollingReport.com, and numbers given are percentages:

Newsweek 9/18-19
Wesley Clark 14
John Kerry 12
Howard Dean 12
John Edwards 7
Al Sharpton 2
Dennis Kucinich 2
Don’t know 19

CNN/USA Today/Gallup 9/19-21
Wesley Clark 22
Howard Dean 13
John Kerry 11
Dick Gephardt 11
Joe Lieberman 10
John Edwards 4
Carol Moseley Braun 3
Al Sharpton 4
Dennis Kucinich 2
Other/None/No opinion 16

Ipsos-Reid/Cook 9/16-18
Howard Dean 15
Wesley Clark 13
John Kerry 12
Richard Gephardt 9
Joe Lieberman 9
John Edwards 9
Al Sharpton 7
Carol Moseley Braun 1
Other/None/Not sure 21

Three things immediately strike me about this data. First, Dean is not that far ahead and Kerry is not that far behind. It’s a bit of revisionist history to claim that Dean always had a lock on the nomination early. Second, look at the high “Not sure” responses. Third, the field is pretty even, there is no consensus leader, and the leader in each poll is not that far ahead.

Now let’s go to Republicans in 2008:

AP-Ipsos 9/10-12/07
Rudy Giuliani 24
Fred Thompson 19
John McCain 15
Mitt Romney 7
Newt Gingrich 6
Mike Huckabee 5
Sam Brownback 2
None 9
Unsure 13

Gallup, 9/14-16/07
Rudy Giuliani 27
John McCain 18
Fred Thompson 18
Newt Gingrich 11
Mitt Romney 6
Mike Huckabee 3
Ron Paul 3
Duncan Hunter 2
Sam Brownback 1
Tom Tancredo 1
None (vol.)/Unsure 9

While we do have a consensus winner (Giuliani), he is not that far ahead, there are a number of candidates above 5%, and the None/Unsure numbers are high.  Couple this with the fact that Romney actually leads in state polls in 3 of the first 4 states and Thompson is expected to do well in the south and midwest, and we have a wide-open field still, and that’s before we get to Newt Gingrich.  So while the Democratic race is likely to be a 3-person race, the Republicans face a lot more uncertainty, and therefore these national polls have to especially be taken with a grain of salt.

Mitt Romney’s new publication, “Strategy for a Stronger America“, strongly evokes the same themes that Harry Truman outlined during his 1949 Inaugural Speech. The commonalities are there for the taking–several years after a catastrophic event, we face a changing world economy, ideological threats abroad, and emergence of new alliances. If we want to know what a Romney presidency would be like, we perhaps should look at what the Truman presidency was like.

I have been surprised at the lack of buzz around Romney’s release, given that he’s the first Republican candidate to make his positions as explicit as this. Of course at 68 pages it’s not a 5-minute read. I would suspect we’ll hear more from both supporters and detractors over the next 2-3 weeks.

The publication itself is, I must say, top notch. The design is highly appealing, the text is concise and highly quotable, and the pictures are effective at framing Romney as presidential. Whether you’re a ranter or raver, there’s plenty in here to nibble on.

Contained within “Strategy for a Stronger America” is the text to Romney’s piece in July/August 2007 Foreign Affairs, “Rising to a New Generation of Global Challenges“. In order to objectively analyze the rhetoric of this piece, I turned to the technology that we use to run Wonkosphere’s engine, Crawdad’s Centering Resonance Analysis, or CRA. CRA uses natural language processing to construct a concept map, or word network, out of the text. The following shows the CRA Network for Romney’s piece.

Only the most important, or influential words are shown. The words with highest influence are boxed in red; the second most influential in yellow; and the third most influential are unboxed. Connections between words indicate purposeful semantic connections by the writer (Romney).

We see that Romney’s worldview begins with the relationship between the U.S. military and the state of the world. He does not shy away from highlighting the troops in Iraq, and calls for “investments” to deal with our challenges. “Security” and “policy” (Romney’s a PolicyWonk!) are prominent themes, and its interesting to see “economic” so strongly link the themes of “military” and “political”.

The Crawdad software also allows you to compare one text against a whole set of others in order to see which one is closest, or most resonant with the target. I chose as a comparison set the Inaugural Speeches of all the U.S. presidents, as such speeches are both readily available and usually outline the worldview that the incoming president has.

Lo and behold, the software indicates that Romney’s piece is most similar to the inaugural speech by Harry Truman in 1949–by a lot! Here are word pairs that both pieces had in common.

Note the common themes: “Europe”; the connection between “freedom”, “peace”, and “security”; which in turn is connected to “economic development”, through the “world”.

Like Truman, we might expect that a Romney presidency will create new alliances, moving away from the U.N. and towards NATO and other ad hoc alliances; we may see economic outreach to new allies, in the same way the U.S. aided Turkey and Greece after WW2; we may see contraversy over civil rights, via the threat of terrorism replacing the threat of communism; we may see a new nuclear era; and we may see renewal of a cold war (Russia; China; Greenland?).

Finally, like Truman, Romney hopes to show-up all of the pundits when it comes to election predictions.