The latest polls show a neck-and-neck race between McCain and Romney in Florida, but CI’s measurement of the blogosphere gives McCain a 7% lead.
For more information on our methodology, please see our posts on Michigan, Iowa, and South Carolina.
(Originally published Monday 1/28– re-posted after move from Movable Type to Wordpress)
A new Harris Interactive poll released to be released later today in advance of next week’s State of the Union address reveals that four out of five Americans believe the state of the country is either fair or poor. Broken down by party affiliation, 61% of Republicans believe the state of the union is fair/poor, 95% of Democrats, and 87% of Independents.
The poll also asks about seven specific issues. Unsurprisingly, given recent economic events, “strengthening the economy” suffered the largest drop from last year’s poll. In 2007, 36% of the respondents said strengthening the economy was going well; this year it’s down to 16%. The only increase was in sentiment about the state of the Iraq war. Last year 19% said the Iraq war was going well; this year it’s up to 26%.
In light of this new poll, I thought it might be interesting to see which issues directly tied to presidential candidates are being most discussed online, broken out by Left and Right.
We began tracking several major issues, and created search agents wherein key terms around those issues be mentioned within a certain number of words of any of the major presidential candidate’s name (both Democratic and Republican). This is to ensure as much as possible that each topic is being discussed in direct relation to the presidential race. We have previously identified hundreds of blogs as “left-leaning”, and likewise for “right-leaning”. We ran these search agents through both blog networks, and the resulting share-of-voice is displayed below.
Iraq-related conversation of course dominates the Left, but the biggest surprise is that Immigration issues were discussed significantly more often on the Right than Iraq (Immigration policy was not included in the Harris poll). In the past when we’ve surveyed these issues we had taken all online sources–blogs, message boards, and news–together; and had found that Immigration always came in a distant second to Iraq. We always assumed that the Right talks about Immigration more than the Left, but it was surprising to see that it was actually the dominant topic.
It was also a bit surprising to find that both gay issues and general conversations about the economy were almost equally distributed on the Left and Right. 
Around the office, we talk alot about the future of the next generation agency. As a technology solution that is helping companies and agencies measure and engage with social media, we have a lot of skin in the game, so to speak, on the future of agencies and agency holding companies.
These two links from MediaPost, I think, do a good job of laying out the issues that face agencies today:
BL Ochman’s post yesterday, besides being typically cheeky, is so right. It’s refreshing to see an “A list” blogger like BL makes this assessment. I’d think many regular bloggers will appreciate this post. Ultimately, blogger popularity won’t help you determine who is most influential.
Update: The last poll to come out before the SC primary showed Huckabee pulling ahead by a comparable margin to what CI’s measurement of the blogosphere had projected. McCain ended up with a victory. Perhaps this has something to do with older Evangelical voters being unable to come to the polls because of the weather, or perhaps it’s one of many other reasons. Regardless, CI’s projections have consistently been at least as accurate as traditional polls, which speaks to the power of the so-called “collective intellect.”
CI correctly projected Clinton’s win in Nevada. We used two different methodologies for measurement in SC and Nevada, and it looks like averaging results from both state blogs and national blogs is so far the most accurate measure. We’re 2 for 2 using this method, so this is how we will proceed in all future projections.
We used two different tactics for measuring the Democratic Nevada caucus and the Republican South Carolina primary. For Nevada, we combined a sampling of Nevada blogs with an across-the-board measurement of sentiment and activity about each candidate. For South Carolina, we combined across-the-board blogs with ones which we have identified as “right-leaning.” We tracked activity from Jan. 15 to Jan. 18.
We’re still showing Clinton with a slight lead in Nevada, but the late-breaking good-for-Obama news definitely has a possibility of changing the landscape.
The latest poll shows McCain with a 7-point lead in South Carolina, but our measurement of the blogosphere shows Huckabee pulling out a win–although it’s by less than 1%. Regardless, we’re showing a tighter race than what the polls predict.
For details on the methodology CI used to calculate these results, please see these previous posts:
Iowa/NH
Michigan
(For the first time, I included Ron Paul in our projection. Since the New Republic story broke last week, his online followers appear to have decreased their spamming efforts, making measurement more possible. We’ll see whether or not this comes back to bite us.)
So far, in Iowa and New Hampshire, CI’s method of predicting the primaries has produced approximately the same results as traditional polls. However, we are working on different ways to improve this. We tried something different for Michigan.
Our original method takes the average sentiment times the total of posts on each candidate, when mentioned near the primary state in the blogosphere. Again, we didn’t measure Ron Paul because of the high amount of spam associated with him which so far hasn’t transferred to the voting booth. We also did not measure Duncan Hunter. Combined, these two candidates took about 6.6% of the vote in Michigan. So in our measurements, we used the actual primary results for them, and adjusted the rest of the candidates’ totals to get the following: 
We got most of the order right, but Romney’s lead was exaggerated over the actual primary results, and we showed Thompson and Giuliani flipped. So, we tried a different method as well. We studied a sample of 40 Michigan-based political blogs (20 left-leaning, 20 right-leaning), and applied the same formula to that data set:
The difference between Romney and McCain greatly decreased, to practically a tie. This could be because our data set was so small and thus potentially less accurate. This is offset though, by the fact that all the bloggers are in Michigan, and likely actually primary voters. We tried averaging the two data sets–Michigan bloggers and national bloggers–and the percentages were much closer to the actual final numbers:
There was a lot of talk the day before the election about Dem voters crossing over to vote for Mitt Romney, because they want their candidate to run against him. An MSNBC exit poll showed that only around 7% of the GOP-primary voters were registered Democrats. This number has a lot of potential for inaccuracy though, especially considering that many Dems voting for GOP candidates may not necessarily want to admit that. It’s interesting to note the discrepancy between national left-leaning and right-leaning bloggers when discussing the various candidates in Michigan:
In the left-leaning blogosphere, “Romney & Michigan” was discussed almost twice as much as Hillary Clinton & Michigan, and more than three times more than Obama & Michigan. Granted, the Democratic field was practically a non-factor in Michigan. You’d think, however, that there’d be a lot more discussion on the Left about the potential implications of the Dems’ decisions in Michigan. Instead, Romney completely dominated the discussion, which leads me to believe that there were maybe a few more stealth Dem voters than those who copped to it. Even if the MSNBC exit poll was right, most of the Dem 7% likely voted for Romney, and could be responsible for the higher-than-predicted margin.
Going forward, for our Nevada projection, we will implement the technique of combining local Nevada blogs with national ones. We’ll grab a larger sample of Nevada blogs than we did for Michigan. With each new adjustment, we’re coming closer and closer to a truly predictive model.
Thanks to Mehrshad Setayesh for creating the database queries; and to Brandon Line, John Knowles, and Brian Heisler for assistance with the formulas
Last night at the Colorado chapter of the Business Marketing Association, I listened to Matt Preschern, a VP of Communications for IBM, talk about the digital convergence of marketing. He started off his presentation with a focus I appreciated — how much smaller, more niche audiences are (the lead in to talking about targeting markets in a narrower way for better return on marketing).
He asked a question: In the 1950’s, when I Love Lucy was the #1 show in the US, what percentage of the US market could an advertiser hit by advertising during the program?
I won’t give you the answer yet, instead, his next question: The #1 show today is American Idol. What percentage of the US market can an advertiser reach by buying ads during the show?
The answer is even more surprising than most marketers in the room thought:
I Love Lucy US audience reach: 45% of the US population
American Idol US audience reach: 4% of the US population
Certainly, this splintering effect on TV has been apparent for some time, starting with the rise of cable TV. But, now that (another stat from Matt) teens spend 40% less time watching TV than their parents, and 600% more time online than their parents, those reach stats for TV will continue to sink. Sure, you can make waves with your single Super Bowl ad, but you’ll extend its power with online tie-ins, contests and viral marketing add-ons.
Let’s face it, the power of mass media is more limited than ever. With lower viewership overall on TV, companies poised to add targeted social media marketing to their mix are not only going to do a better job reaching consumers, they’ll have a better ability to track their return on investment. So, the key question for marketers looking into social media campaigns is not reach or impressions. It should be about penetration within the communities of influence in social media.
Why does the micro approach work better? A few reasons I posit here:
While there doesn’t appear to be any groundbreaking products that have caught fire at CES there do seem to be a few stories worth noting. The biggest story is undoubtedly the death of HD-DVD. HD-DVD sentiment has been drastically declining while Blu-Ray has been climbing since Warner Brothers announced support for the Blu-Ray format. Not sure how this will shake out in the long term but the bloggers are certainly jumping on the Blu-Ray bandwagon. I’ve listed some examples with the first going so far as to say people with HD-DVD boxes are returning them.
Are Black Friday HD DVD Adopters Returning Players? [Updated: Toshiba Responds]
Universal HD DVD exclusivity contract has expired, sits non-renewed
The second story centered around Nintendo and the Wii interface. Nintendo received the Tech and Engineering Emmy award for the Wii and even big Bill Gates added to the froth after his keynote where he talked about the Wii, “All of those are just starting to show you that natural interaction pattern really breaks you out of the keyboard and mouse,” Gates said in an interview with Reuters. “The next big surprise for people will be how this natural interface becomes pervasive.”
Nintendo blog buzz (bluzter) jumped nearly 300% at the open of the show.
The last story garnering our attention was the relatively large buzz for the upstart digital electronics hacking platform from bug labs. Okay, not strictly a robot, you can create all sorts of amazing gadgets using the platform and accessories, but I liked the word robot in the title. Even though the company is not yet shipping product they have received a number of media accolades. Check out the vid below.
Last night at the Colorado chapter of the Business Marketing Association, I listened to Matt Preschern, a VP of Communications for IBM, talk about the digital convergence of marketing. He started off his presentation with a focus I appreciated — how much smaller, more niche audiences are (the lead in to talking about targeting markets in a narrower way for better return on marketing).
He asked a question: In the 1950’s, when I Love Lucy was the #1 show in the US, what percentage of the US market could an advertiser hit by advertising during the program?
I won’t give you the answer yet, instead, his next question: The #1 show today is American Idol. What percentage of the US market can an advertiser reach by buying ads during the show?
The answer is even more surprising than most marketers in the room thought:
I Love Lucy US audience reach: 45% of the US population
American Idol US audience reach: 4% of the US population
Certainly, this splintering effect on TV has been apparent for some time, starting with the rise of cable TV. But, now that (another stat from Matt) teens spend 40% less time watching TV than their parents, and 600% more time online than their parents, those reach stats for TV will continue to sink. Sure, you can make waves with your single Super Bowl ad, but you’ll extend its power with online tie-ins, contests and viral marketing add-ons.
Let’s face it, the power of mass media is more limited than ever. With lower viewership overall on TV, companies poised to add targeted social media marketing to their mix are not only going to do a better job reaching consumers, they’ll have a better ability to track their return on investment. So, the key question for marketers looking into social media campaigns is not reach or impressions. It should be about penetration within the communities of influence in social media.
Why does the micro approach work better? A few reasons I posit here:
While there doesn’t appear to be any groundbreaking products that have caught fire at CES there do seem to be a few stories worth noting. The biggest story is undoubtedly the death of HD-DVD. HD-DVD sentiment has been drastically declining while Blu-Ray has been climbing since Warner Brothers announced support for the Blu-Ray format. Not sure how this will shake out in the long term but the bloggers are certainly jumping on the Blu-Ray bandwagon. I’ve listed some examples with the first going so far as to say people with HD-DVD boxes are returning them.
Are Black Friday HD DVD Adopters Returning Players? [Updated: Toshiba Responds]
Universal HD DVD exclusivity contract has expired, sits non-renewed
The second story centered around Nintendo and the Wii interface. Nintendo received the Tech and Engineering Emmy award for the Wii and even big Bill Gates added to the froth after his keynote where he talked about the Wii, “All of those are just starting to show you that natural interaction pattern really breaks you out of the keyboard and mouse,” Gates said in an interview with Reuters. “The next big surprise for people will be how this natural interface becomes pervasive.”
Nintendo blog buzz (bluzter) jumped nearly 300% at the open of the show.
The last story garnering our attention was the relatively large buzz for the upstart digital electronics hacking platform from bug labs. Okay, not strictly a robot, you can create all sorts of amazing gadgets using the platform and accessories, but I liked the word robot in the title. Even though the company is not yet shipping product they have received a number of media accolades. Check out the vid below.
