Judging the Candidates by the Company They Keep
Written by Matt Pace (contact - e-mail) -- October 24th, 2007 | Recommend ThisIn politics, as in life, birds of a feather do indeed flock together. By analyzing the online behavior of voters attracted to each presidential candidate, a telling picture emerges of where the candidates fall across the political spectrum and degree to which they are appealing to their respective bases in advance of the party nomination contests. Rather than parse through what the candidates say, the focus of this analysis is on what their online supporters do.
The following table highlights the percent of a candidate’s website visitors in September who frequented any of the top liberal or conservative blogs during the same month. These readership percentages were then compared (liberal % divided by conservative % in this instance) and sorted to create the ranking.
Observations:
- Ardent anti-war candidate Dennis Kucinich can claim victory for being the “Most Liberal” candidate. Visitors to his website were nearly 3 times as likely to read liberal rather than conservative blogs.
- Fred Thompson’s official entry into the Republican contest in September unleashed a tidal wave of conservative support, helping him secure the title of “Most Conservative” in these rankings. Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee’s success at last week’s Values Voter Summit, however, in addition to unfavorable reviews of Thompson’s campaign to date, signal a tough road lies ahead for the South’s “favorite son.”
- Despite coming from the bluest state in the nation, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney appears to be succeeding at convincing conservatives that he is one of their own.
- While Republicans have been quick to brand Hillary Clinton as a far left liberal, she is actually less liberal that all of her rivals. Clinton is campaigning beyond her base to the broader electorate as though she has already secured her party’s nomination.
- Internet darling Ron Paul is attracting significant interest from the left, leapfrogging even Hillary Clinton. Of course with partisans like Bill Maher supporting him, it is no surprise that rank and file conservatives are less than enthusiastic about Paul’s candidacy.
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October 24th, 2007 at 1:19 pm
How is Fred Thomson’s site attracting the largest volume of unique visitors? Is his IMDB profile referring traffic? Fred is basically a joke at his point… maybe it’s just people coming to check out the worst campaign in recent memory.
October 24th, 2007 at 1:39 pm
I believe Fred had the highest site traffic in September for a couple of reasons: it was the month he (finally) launched his campaign, it was highly publicized, and there was a lot of pent up interest in his “will he” or “won’t he” campaign among some conservatives who saw him as their great conservative hope. While he got a bump in September, based on recent data we’re seeing, he has not been successful in building, let alone sustaining, any momentum post-announcement. If trends continue, I’d anticipate Fred’s unique visitor counts in October dropping 60-70%.
October 25th, 2007 at 9:34 am
Interesting look at the online world of politics. It surprises me that Ron Pauls %’s are so low, given that his supporters flood both conservative and liberal blogs with rants, heartfelt endorsements and the like. People are starting to call them Ron Paul spammers. In any case, once again the net is changing the game of politics. Check out this link for a good read (http://www.spartaninternet.com/2008)
October 25th, 2007 at 12:32 pm
What blogs did you count as liberal and which are “conservative?” I think it would be interesting to see of the blogs chosen as conservative were actually neoconservative. It would be more interesting if you had used pro-peace blogs vs. pro-war blogs, rather than liberal and conservative.
October 25th, 2007 at 1:47 pm
Tex, here are the blogs that were included in the analysis:
Liberal Blog List: americablog.com, crooksandliars.com, dailykos.com, firedoglake.com, huffingtonpost.com, mydd.com, talkingpointsmemo.com, thinkprogress.org, washingtonmonthly.com, atrios.blogspot.com
Conservative Blog List: instapundit.com, hotair.com, littlegreenfootballs.com, michellemalkin.com, newsbusters.org, powerlineblog.com, redstate.com, townhall.com, corner.nationalreview.com, captainsquartersblog.com
Pro and anti-war blogs would indeed provide interesting data; however, I chose these blogs as they are not topic specific–just like this election. The war in iraq is only one of several hot button issues (immigration reform and the economy are also top of mind for many voters). Thanks for the feedback.
October 25th, 2007 at 8:28 pm
Mike Gravel’s site got too little traffic? I’d like to see where he ranks!
October 26th, 2007 at 3:09 pm
Interesting. I appreciate the information.