Obama v. Clinton: Ignore the Media Hype, This Race Isn’t Close
Written by Matt Pace (contact - e-mail) -- April 10th, 2008 | Recommend ThisWith the majority of primary votes cast over a month ago, March was likely met with a fair amount of disappointment by anyone hoping the hoopla surrounding the presidential race would quiet down, if only for a moment. A lot happened on the way to the Democratic Party nomination last month and as Pennsylvania gears up for its primary next week, it’s worth looking back at events that shaped the race in March and look forward to what is likely to happen next.
Clinton and Obama sparred on almost every issue last month, much to the delight of John McCain. Clinton claimed she’d be most prepared to defend the country but later had to defend and then recant her Bosnian war-time experience claims. Obama faced blistering criticism over inflammatory remarks made by his pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright, forcing the candidate to make what many called the most important speech of his life.
Reviewing the tale of the tape, the extent of Obama’s dominance is clear. Obama doubled up Clinton in each of the six metrics shown above. Time spent on the candidates’ YouTube channels was particularly disproportionate in Obama’s favor thanks specifically to the popularity of the speech he gave last month at the height of the Rev. Wright controversy. At last check, the speech had been viewed over 4 million times on YouTube. In contrast, Clinton’s most watched video in March was the much publicized, and highly parodied, spot about a phone ringing in the middle of the night, which to date has been seen just under a million times.
The chart below compares each candidate’s share of monthly FaceTime during the past year. FaceTime is Compete’s holistic measure of web-wide candidate engagement based on the total amount of time voters spend with candidates across the leading social networks and video sharing websites. While this has effectively been a two person race for much of the past year (no offense to John Edwards), what’s surprising is that Obama continues to add upon his commanding lead over Clinton in terms of online time with voters. In March, Obama earned four times more FaceTime than Clinton.
From a web perspective, Barack Obama’s heavy advertising spending in Pennsylvania appears to be having its intended impact on voters. The chart below tracks the candidates’ share of traffic to their websites among Pennsylvanians. While recent state-wide polling shows him narrowing the gap with Clinton, online at least, Pennsylvanians have been moving to Obama for weeks. With the exception of late March spike in Clinton’s state web traffic share, which coincided with national interest in her inaccurate claims of landing under sniper fire in Bosnia in 1996, Obama has outdrawn Clinton handily online for the better part of the past month.
Given the trends noted above, Obama’s increasing momentum, and his dominance across almost every measurable statistic, he could pull out a victory next week in Pennsylvania. This of course would be a disaster for Clinton who has pinned all hope on getting a late boost from the final primaries in order to persuade the party’s Super Delegates to hand her the nomination.
Don’t believe the media hype, this race really isn’t really that close.
Did you like that post? You'll love these.
Done reading? subscribe: To get an automatic feed of all future posts subscribe here, or to receive them via email enter your email address in the box in the right column.
Link to This Post:
Posted under: Politics |
Trackback Link | Permalink | 
Get the 
April 10th, 2008 at 1:01 pm
Although it is apparent that Obama may have the edge over Clinton, we must ask ourselves which demographic uses the internet the most — especially sites such as YouTube - the college demographic no? Clinton may have far more supporters than this data shows that simply do not access those sites and searches the way the ‘younger folk’ do. Obama has been leading in the social media world since day 1 — in fact, we think it’s partially what caused the hype about him in the first place, however we think we can’t discount the older people who simply may not be interested in YouTubing everything Facebooking their heart outs when it comes to political campaigns.
April 10th, 2008 at 1:28 pm
Lets also not forget about basic curiosity. People dont know much about Obama. Everyone one in their brother already knows much about Hillary and her history.
April 10th, 2008 at 10:27 pm
Web statistics aside, it’s going to be very difficult for Obama to win Pennsylvania. The way its shaping up is exactly like Texas. In the relatively large gap before Texas, Obama rapidly closed the gap with heavy spending and even went ahead in polls just before the primary. Didn’t work, and Clinton sqeaked through. I reckon the same thing is going to happen again.
April 10th, 2008 at 11:02 pm
Thanks for the polictical update. It’s been a while, but this is very timely news.
April 11th, 2008 at 2:31 am
Obama actually won the delegate race in Texas.
April 11th, 2008 at 10:52 am
Clinton won New York, California, Ohio, Florida..
You cannot have a democratic candidate who is only favorite in the republican hillbilly states.
Look at the states which had the largest voter turnout in % of the overall population who came to the democratic primaries, Clinton won all those states.
Which basically means Clinton is the better Democratic candidate.
The Internet today is far from being a democratic tool that works in a fair and balanced way. The Internet can easilly be manipulated by a group of people who want to skew the truth in their favor. The same people worked on the Ron Paul campaign, constantly spamming Digg, Techmeme and other sites. This isn’t the way to do things democratically.
Where does Obama’s extra amount of money come from? All of it? Is the exact provenance of his campaign funding accounted for down to every dollar?
Setup a real democracy 2.0 website instead, where each voter is identified, each voice has the same weight, that there is no advertising or other way to skew the public opinion.
Finally, there is nothing worse then telling people the vote is over before it even has been done. Democratic convention is on the 1st of July. Unless all other candidates drop out of the race before that date, then wait for that date and stop telling people in states that hgaven’t voted yet that their vote doesn’t count. Stop telling Florida and Michigan voters that their votes doesn’t count. Stop telling superdelegates that their judgment doesn’t count.
April 11th, 2008 at 3:27 pm
Charbox I think you will find you have far more to worry about the provenance of Hilary’s contributions. Illegal chinese donations have been uncovered to Hilary. In terms of Florida, Hilary did not win as they agreed they would not compete in Florida and the DNC ruled that the vote would not count. In terms of Florida and New York they were both won by John Kerry and see how well Democrats did there.
Hilary has lost already and the only question is will she take down the Democratic party before she realizes that. She is the GOPs best weapon at the moment and they want her to stay in.
BTW my grandmother donated $50 to Obama and that type of donation is where his money came from instead of $4,600 from the big shots like Hilary who want something for their money.
April 11th, 2008 at 3:40 pm
Ignore the silly adolescent protean Internet Revolution hype, this race is close.
Nobody cares how many times you view Obama’s myspace, kiddo. Adults vote. Old people vote. kids don’t.
Every four years, we hear the same thing, refitted for whatever sites or channels are hot this year. This would be a more accurate chart/paragraph image.
April 11th, 2008 at 3:41 pm
Uh…”more accurate chart/paragraph image” is an image link, above.
April 11th, 2008 at 4:12 pm
RealityCheck, truth is there is no way to know really where Obama’s 400 million dollars in campaign contributions came from. For sure we don’t know about Hillary as well, but don’t tell me you have proof that Obama’s money is cleaner. It might be half tunnelled through BS anonymous money pots from insurance companies and Halliburton. RealityCheck, don’t tell me you know where all of Obama’s money has come from, nobody knows. That’s how the US campaign finance system works, and any candidate would be insane not to accet any money coorporations give them anonymously.
RealityCheck, stop saying that Clinton is GOP’s best weapon. That is BS and you know it. Obama can’t beat republicans in republican states. No democratic candidate has won the presidency since 1964 without winning New York, California , Ohio and Florida.
And finally, stop saying Florida’s voters shouldn’t count. Whatever rule DNC voted for before Florida democrats decided to change their primary date is irrelevant. Do you know who the people are that decided in Florida and Michigan to move their dates? Can you say for sure that those people didn’t know Clinton had better chances in their states and thus chose to move their date in purpose to annul their votes? Not counting Florida and Michigan voters is just insane, look back in 2008 and see how much Florida affected the outcome of the presidential election. You don’t want to disenfranchise them again dude.
That’s exactly what superdelegates can do, is to take into consideration that FLorida and Michigan voters could have balanced the delegate race out so they would be exactly equal today in both popular vote and delegate count. So only difference would be Clinton won the Democratic states and Obama won the republican states. Obama had twice as much money to achieve the same results but using republican territory, anti-democrat territory mostly.
April 11th, 2008 at 4:58 pm
of course he beats her with the web, it’s all kids looking up obama. they’re even begging their parents to vote for obama. lol.
obama, the kids’ candidate
April 12th, 2008 at 2:02 pm
I believe anything is possible but Obama has a great chance of beating Clinton in PA he has outspent her and people are ralling behind him. The TV networks are making people dislusional by the coverage their giving Hilary and McCain because they don’t want Obama to win the nomination but when the voter’s go to the polls the it will be crystal clear who they want to be our next president OBAMA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
April 12th, 2008 at 3:47 pm
In my essay The coming Digital Presidency I point out that Internet tools could be used with devastating effectiveness by not just an electoral campaign, but by a sitting President: http://mathoda.com/archives/189
April 14th, 2008 at 8:03 am
Contact Super Delegates
22nd April, PA Primary, let’s make Hillary win…
Here is the list of Super Delegates who are supporting Hillary from PA
Allyson Y Schwartz
John P Murtha
Joe Sestak
Ed Rendell
Paul F Kanjorski
Marcel Groen
Ruth C. Rudy
T.J. Rooney
Jean A. Milko
Ian Murray
Evelyn D. Richardson
Rena Baumgartner
Let’s urge them to Keep Pledge to vote for Clinton.
Here is the list of Obama Supporters
Patrick J. Murphy
Chaka Fattah
Leon Lynch
Carol Ann Campbell
Robert P. Casey, Jr.
Let’s urge them to switch their Convention voting pledge from Barack Obama to Clinton
And here is the list of Un-committed Delegates
Ronald R. Donatucci
Robert Brady
Michael F Doyle
Christopher P Carney
Tim Holden
Jason Altmire
William M. George
Sophie Masloff
Let’s urge them to end their Uncommitted stance, and make a public pledge to vote for Clinton.
April 16th, 2008 at 5:41 pm
Thanks for the polictical update. It’s been a while, but this is very timely news
April 16th, 2008 at 5:42 pm
more accurate chart/paragraph image” is an image link, above.
April 16th, 2008 at 5:43 pm
Setup a real democracy 2.0 website instead, where each voter is identified, each voice has the same weight, that there is no advertising or other way to skew the public opinion
April 16th, 2008 at 5:43 pm
Nobody cares how many times you view Obama’s myspace, kiddo. Adults vote. Old people vote. kids don’t.
April 16th, 2008 at 5:44 pm
of course he beats her with the web, it’s all kids looking up obama. they’re even begging their parents to vote for obama.
April 16th, 2008 at 5:45 pm
It’s been a while, but this is very timely news
April 16th, 2008 at 5:46 pm
Realy
It’s been a while, but this is very timely news
Thank you.
April 17th, 2008 at 5:34 am
Obama is a liar - Hillary’s problems stem from the fact every time she sneezes it is on the front page as a slam against Obama. Every time Obama tells another one of his lies, it goes unreported and Hillary is ripped apart for mentioning his name.
For all you Obama supporters, enjoy the moment if he does win the nomination (and I pray he doesn’t) - McCain will have a field day with him. Given the whinning he is now doing, and given that this has NOT been a negative campaign, I think he will follow Dukakas and Kerry as Democratic hopefuls, but the Republicans will remain in the White House.
Let’s HOPE that Hillary will win in Pennsylvania with a huge majority - 86% of the vote would be nice. Not only would this bring CHANGE, but then Obama could quite.
Come on Pennsylvania, you can put Hillary in the White House! Go Hillary Go!
April 17th, 2008 at 1:21 pm
USA needs urgently someone like Obama to take its main lead. The image of the country is now so affected worldwide that its consequences are being reflected in many areas such as economy, respect for US opinions and so on. The world is looking closely to the actions and attitudes of all main candidates, specially now after a disastrous management by the egocentric cheater Bush.
Certainly Hillary with her dirty tricks to pressure-impose her win is not going to help her in the future. Unfortunately most of US voters are mood motivated people that don´t hav a clue what going on. They are just manipulated by the big shark US media that exactly knows how to implement their influences to these masses. It seems what most US people want is to choose the nastier, cheater person and they wrongly think that such person is more capable to lead the country. They are totally wrong.
USA needs urgently to have a positive image around the world and this image will only be achieved by someone honest, more human, and more conscientious about the issues that matter most.
Manny of you might say “we don´t give a darn about the rest of the world thinks of us, we are just better. Period.” This attitude is utterly wrong and if it continues, other economies will take over, leaving US on an eternal crisis.
April 18th, 2008 at 4:00 pm
Democrats, why don’t you simply nominate BOTH candidates, and let “the people” decide?
April 21st, 2008 at 7:37 pm
Holes in Hillary’s argument for being able to take Pennsylvania over Obama…Think about it for a moment, Pennsylvania is a BLUE STATE, that means that who ever wins the Democratic primary would also defeat any RED CANDIDATE (McCain included…) in the November general elections. Therefore, Hillary’s position, that her ability to win PA vs Obama’s demonstrates her ability to take this “BIG” state in November’s general election is a mute point, since Pennsylvania is a BLUS STATE anyway. Democrats will not give up Pennsylvania to the Republicans just because their candidate did not win in these primaries.
April 22nd, 2008 at 6:04 am
If you’re tired of waiting around for those super delegates to make a decision already, go to LobbyDelegates.com and push them to support Clinton or Obama
If you haven’t done so yet, please write a message to each of your state’s superdelegates at http://www.lobbydelegates.com
It takes a moment, but what’s a few minutes now worth to get Obama in office?!
Sending a note to current Obama supporters lets them know it’s appreciated, sending a note to current Clinton supporters can hopefully sway them to change their vote to Obama, and sending a note to the uncommitted folks will hopefully sway them to vote for Obama. It’s that easy…
Clinton Supporters:
It takes a moment, but what’s a few minutes now worth to get Clinton in office?!
Sending a note to current Clinton supporters lets them know it’s appreciated, sending a note to current Obama supporters can hopefully sway them to change their vote to Clinton, and sending a note to the uncommitted folks will hopefully sway them to vote for Clinton. It’s that easy…
April 22nd, 2008 at 10:13 pm
here’s the thing: all those metrics internet related… lots of voters (especially older ones) could care less about youtube etc. i think it’s important to realize that the elderly and baby-boomer votes may not follow the trends in the metrics above. also, just because you’re looking at obama on the web doesn’t mean you’re going to vote for him. if there’s one thing to take away from the media, it’s that bad news interests people way more than good news. ie. maybe people are looking up dirt on candidates they love to hate. sorry have to be a skeptic.
April 23rd, 2008 at 5:25 pm
You are right, when counting the votes of all the Primaries that actually mirror voting procedure as it will be done in the fall, meaning they get all day to choose when to vote, and they vote in the privacy of a voting booth, Hillary is clobbering Obama in the Electoral College Race by 2-1. It’s such a romp, as you say, it isn’t even close.
April 25th, 2008 at 2:37 pm
It’s really ashame how much the Media is lying to the public and how much coverage Hilary is getting about her current big MO win in PA is was clearly expected for her to win in PA since she has the advantage amongst the popular vote arena.
I think it wasn’t a total lost for Obama since he did close the gap over her big margin. However HRC win doesn’t even close the gap between Obama lead over delegate votes no matter what how much HRC wins in the next coming elections she still falls short.
Obama had do be patience and play the waiting game because of HRC is not in anyway going to drop out of this race anytime soon no matter how bad it gets for her.
I just wanted to comment on Bill Clinton’s remarks about the Obama camp playing the race card, I think he is hurting Hilary more than he thinks and all of her loyal Black supporters need to really do some soul searching and question why are sticking behind Hilary.
April 29th, 2008 at 5:38 am
YouTubeRobot.com today announces YouTube Robot 2.0, a tool that enables you to download video from YouTube.com onto your PC, convert it to various formats to watch it when you are on the road on mobile devices like mobile phone, iPod, iPhone, Pocket PC, PSP, or Zune.
YouTube Robot allows you to search for videos using keywords or browse video by category, author, channel, language, tags, etc. When you find something noteworthy, you can preview the video right in YouTube Robot and then download it onto the hard disk drive. The speed, at which you will be downloading, is very high: up to 5 times faster than other software when you download a single file and up to 4 times faster when you download multiple files at a time.
Manual download is not the only option with YouTube Robot. You may as well schedule the download and conversion tasks to be executed automatically, even when you are not around. Downloading is followed by conversion to the format of your choice and uploading videos to a mobile device (if needed). For example, you can plug in iPod, select the video, go to bed, and when you wake up next morning, your iPod will be ready to play new YouTube videos.
Product page: 3w.youtuberobot.com
Direct download link: 3w.youtuberobot.com/download/utuberobot.exe
Company web-site: 3w.youtuberobot.com
April 30th, 2008 at 12:14 am
After listening to the media discuss the remarks of both Rev. Wright and Senator Obama for the past few days, it seems that the focus of the Presidential election has been pushed away from the forefront. Why is Rev. Wright a topic of conversation? He was absolutely correct when he stated that he is not a politician. Which means that he does not have to answer to Senator Obama or any other media representative. What I am struggling to understand is how did Rev. Wright’s opinion become Obama’s opinion. When I look at the television I don’t see two men representing themselves as one person. Despite the fact that the American media wants to belittle, distort, and degrade this man for his individual views, have we forgotten the fact that our country is involved in matters that sit at the feet of lies and deception? This seems to clearly be an attempt to dehumanize the character of Senator Obama, and unfortunately is he dragging himself into this game. Checkmate!!!
I, personally, may not agree with every word that comes out of the mouth of Rev. Wright, but I can truly understand the purpose and meaning behind his comments. To pretend we live in a society, where the very core of its’ existence has been founded on racism, bigotry, and discrimination, would be like attempting to believe that this soil truly belonged to the English, and Native Indians were visitors in search of new territory. Please don’t allow the modern day history books fool you. Despite the advances that various races have made in this country, this society still exist with high levels of second-class membership.
When schools across this country fail to receive equal access to funding, supplies, and resources (with many of these impoverished schools being located in areas that have substandard conditions and suffering from the lack of economic development); when Black and Brown males continue to make up less than 50 percent of the American population, but 90 percent of the prison population; when women/females continue to make up less than 10 percent of executive positions at major corporations, despite their educational advances; when a name like “Obama” have various individuals automatically assuming that individual is Muslim or a terrorist; or when one minister’s personal views become so important the American media stops addressing issues of substance, this society is failing to deal with matters that plague the nation.
I would strongly suggest that Senator Obama remain on topic. Stop allowing the American media to take the focus off of the major topics. This is not a war between you and Rev. Wright. Stop allowing Rev. Wright to be your discussion to explain. It is clear that Rev. Wright is capable of speaking for himself, and anyone with thinking ability will clearly be able to understand that your experiences/views are yours, and Rev. Wright’s experiences/views are his. If an individual is going to believe in you as a candidate, Rev. Wright, his opinion, and his beliefs, will not have a damning affect. Take your focus off of what is least important, and place it back on topic. And, stop being a pawn in this media game. STAY FOCUSED!!!!
LLW, Houston, TX
April 30th, 2008 at 9:17 am
card credit debt help non profit credit card debt help
I am same day payday loan grand online casino
May 1st, 2008 at 5:06 pm
wow, im sorry but that is a little sad lwilliams thats you would take the time to write that whole thing
May 4th, 2008 at 12:39 am
www produits casino fr
Preview casinos descargas linea ringtones for cellular one phone
May 5th, 2008 at 5:12 pm
interest free payday loan payday first loan free
Perhaps jugar poquer strep poker
May 17th, 2008 at 10:50 pm
The chart, Share of Pennsylvania Visitors to the Candidates Websites, is obviously a fake. The perspective could be right or wrong, but I give no credibility when an argument is supported by manufactured data.
There is pretty much no chance that the data points would be mirror reflections of each other. Looking at the real chart proves it: http://siteanalytics.compete.com/barackobama.com+hillaryclinton.com?metric=uv
June 1st, 2008 at 11:03 pm
The recent footage of a minister smearing Hilary
Clinton at Obama’s church is very disturbing. The
minister is shown defaming Hilary
Clinton, who has never expressed such racist views. I
take offense at the comment made by a man on your
show, to the effect that this is how people speak in
black churches and we are ignorant if we don’t like
it. There is nothing ignorant in decrying racism
whether it be from whites toward blacks or vice-versa.
Obama’s problem is NOT THAT PEOPLE ATTRIBUTE TO HIM
such comments. His problem is that he must have seen
many such displays in his church over twenty years.
It is clear that his appearance of uprightness and
decency is, to some extent, a facade. Obama does not
explain why he attended such a church because he
cannot explain it. Should he become president, we
will find out what sort of values he really stands
for, and possibly, they will be the exact opposite of
those he espouses!
June 1st, 2008 at 11:05 pm
N. B. –The show referred to was on CNN
June 2nd, 2008 at 3:25 am
poker gratuites dbutant
Ironiquement jeu flash poker roulette online gratis une rgle du jeu du poker vente de jeu de poker texas holdem odds
June 26th, 2008 at 1:15 pm
BUYING THE PRESIDENCY OF THE U.S. …
How many of the 1.5 million people who sent $200 to Obama’s campaign were black? After all, Obama got 90% of the black vote. Is it possible that a group which comprises about 15% of the population in America could rule the other 85% … simply by buying the election via contributions from 1.5 million people, in a country of 300 million people?
July 4th, 2008 at 4:54 pm
gratis internet poker
Uno celebrity poker www poker spielen limit 7 card stud texas holdem online kostenlos online video poker
July 9th, 2008 at 2:57 pm
ruleta de la fortuna online
Aggiungere casino con bonus juegos polly poker poquer de 7 giochi online poker gratis jugar poker omaha
July 20th, 2008 at 12:08 am
millionairecasino
axiomatize tangent mastery psilocybin prided horseshoer
July 20th, 2008 at 2:02 pm
21 blackjack
groceries swipe rejector!
July 20th, 2008 at 6:18 pm
live poker turnering
strewn judged petticoats earnestness persuadable
September 3rd, 2008 at 6:25 am
interesting