Opinion - News Analysis   

Clinton or Obama — who clicks with the voters?

The voters made fools of the pollsters and pundits when they gave Hillary Clinton her supposedly surprising victory over Barack Obama in the New Hampshire primary. Not as if that is news. We know that polls are suspect, but they are all we have had to feed the media’s horse-race campaign coverage.

But now the Internet gives us new metrics to spot, measure, predict — and influence — public thinking. These measurements do not pretend to be scientific and, like polls, they raise more questions than they definitively answer. But they do provide a means for politicians, marketers and journalists to hear the conversation online. Here is a guide.

Media coverage: the Internet enables us to gather the entire corpus of news and check whether it is in sync with the world it covers. Last spring, I counted mentions of the candidates in major media and saw Mr. Obama getting disproportionate attention. Was that news judgment or an agenda? Today, we can track media mentions via Google Trends and Daylife (a startup I advise), where I see Ms Clinton generally ahead.

Searches: Google Trends lets us snoop on the number of searches on words. Ms Clinton was ahead, but since Mr. Obama’s victory in Iowa, he took the lead. Is that an indicator of support or merely curiosity?

Blog mentions: BlogPulse showed Ms Clinton mentioned more in the blog conversation until Mr. Obama’s Iowa victory, when he dominated; right now, they are even. I also use BlogPulse to track campaign rhetoric. There, I could see just when “change” became Mr. Obama’s favourite word. I was also able to look back in the YouTube record of his campaign and see when the word popped up on all his signage. In the last Democratic debate before New Hampshire, all the candidates chanted “change” and another tool — TagCrowd — enabled me to analyse the transcript and count 90 references to “change,” more than mentions of “health” or “Iraq.”

Social sites: techPresident tracks the candidates’ friendships. On Facebook, Mr. Obama has long been ahead, with 235,000 to Clinton’s 71,000. On MySpace, Mr. Obama leads 225,000 to 162,000. Clearly, demographics affect these counts and they are manipulable. But that’s precisely their benefit to the campaigns, which try to be viral, with supporters selling supporters. Note that a co-founder of Facebook, Chris Hughes, is an Obama adviser.

YouTube: Video traffic is a similarly skewed but still informative measure of supporters’ rabidity. The small but passionate band behind libertarian candidate Ron Paul in the Republican race has played YouTube brilliantly, making him No 1 with 10.5 million views v 9.5 million for Mr. Obama and 4.6 million for Ms Clinton.

Donors: Ms Clinton and Mr. Obama have seesawed in fundraising. In the latest quarter reported, she nosed ahead, $24 million to $22.5 million, but they each raised more than $100 million last year. And, importantly, each contribution is like an investment in the candidate: that is, putting money where the mouth is. Mr. Obama was ahead in this measure, but, in the latest quarter reported, Ms Clinton jumped ahead.

Prediction markets: right now, NewsFutures’ market shows a dead heat in the Democratic race (and a 65 per cent chance of the Democratic candidate moving into the White House). Intrade sells futures contracts on predictions and, at the time of writing, for the nomination, Ms Clinton’s are on top at 59.7 over Mr. Obama at 39.1. For the White House, Ms Clinton’s contracts are selling for 37.4 v Mr. Obama at 23.8.

Odds: Linesmaker’s rundown for the White House: Ms Clinton 7-5, Mr. Obama 2-1. The bottom line? There is no bottom line. That will still be determined by the voters, thank goodness. — ©Guardian Newspapers Limited, 2008

(Jeff Jarvis is a journalism professor at the City University of New York who blogs at buzzmachine.com)

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Stories in this Section

Thriving against the predictions
Corruption in NREGA: myths and reality
Corrections and clarifications
Clinton or Obama — who clicks with the voters?
‘Factual mistakes’
Justice for Bilkis
Intolerance exposed
Well done, India
“Our methods for teaching of reading are quite obsolete”

Copyright © 2008, The Hindu. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of The Hindu