A Weblog of Centrist Voices in American Politics
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A Weblog of Centrist Voices in American Politics | |
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November 24, 2003Blogging The NumbersWhich candidates do bloggers post about most? Just because a candidate is spoken about does not mean the campaign is succeeding. But in the absence of gaffes or scandals, mention of a candidates name is one measure of interest in the campaign. I've been added to the team at The Blogging Of The President:2004 and have written an entry which I'll summarize here. I've written a script to query the Feedster search engine for posts over the last week which mention the Democratic presidential contenders. Feedster is a search engine which uses indexes and searches RSS feeds produced by blogs and news services. The summary data includes items which appeared in blogs, and in major online media such as nytimes.com. Inspection of the source data suggests to me that the majority of posts are from blogs rather than major media, but I have not yet been able to quantify this. While Feedster does not comprehensively index every blog and online new source, there is no indication that its data sources are skewed in a way which would favor any particular candidate.  To my mind, the most surprising results are that items mentioning John Kerry are running second to Howard Dean. The Kerry campaign is not thought to have a strong network of grassroots support among bloggers. If mentions of Kerry are being driven by news items, it could reflect reports about a shakeup in his campaign, or more favorably to him, his second place position in polls in New Hampshire. Gephardt seems to be the underperformer, in that his blogging numbers do not reflect his strength in Iowa. Perhaps blogging is more prevalent on the coasts than in the heartland. The full entry over at Bopnews has a breakout of the data by day and some further details about methodology. Posted by rickheller at November 24, 2003 08:10 AMComments
It's hard to say what this is telling us off of one data point. I agree with your hypothesis that it might well show sensitivity to current news. Surely it reflects Dean's status as a front-runner, but I doubt the Kerry number is reflective of Kerry as the number 2. Kerry got dissed by Insult the comic dog on Leno the other night, his campaign is in utter disarray, and Kerry seems to be mentally out of it if a recent Globe story is at all accurate. The "piling on" phase is is about here for Kerry, and though he's probably going to be the last to know(that his campaign is dead in the water), he shows signs of getting it. The best he can hope for is a win in his home state, and even that seems questionable. Posted by: bk at November 25, 2003 09:32 AM |
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