With 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.

While the dust has yet to settle entirely in the primary contests, an aura of inevitability is increasingly surrounding Barack Obama. This glow extends beyond the nomination battle with Hillary Clinton, against whom Obama has won 10 straight contests, and could prove extremely difficult for the GOP’s presumptive nominee, John McCain, to overcome.

Across several web metrics, summarized below, Obama leads McCain by no less than a 3 to 1 margin. In terms of online FaceTime with voters, the margin was 6 to 1 in favor of Obama last month. Beyond his fundraising prowess, speaking skills, and likeability, Obama’s online dominance is truly what separates him from both Clinton and McCain and may well be a deciding factor in an Obama walk-off this November.

The barrage of early primary contests in January leading up to Super Tuesday accompanied by near dawn to dusk media attention and heavy ad spending by the candidates led to huge increases in the candidates’ FaceTime with voters in January. During the month, voters spent a total of 77% more time online with the candidates than in December, with certain candidates benefiting more than others.

The table below shows each candidate’s FaceTime in January and their share of their party’s FaceTime. Following the table are charts comparing monthly FaceTime share by candidate during the past year.

January Highlights:

• With reality helping to winnow the field, Obama scored the most FaceTime with voters, grabbing a commanding 60% of all his party’s FaceTime in January, or nearly triple Clinton’s attention. Obama’s Iowa victory speech was the most watched candidate video on YouTube in January and to date has been viewed over 1 million times.
• Across the aisle, McCain’s FaceTime grew the most of any GOP candidate; however, he continued to trail rivals Ron Paul, Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney in earning time with voters. While his nomination is all but certain, McCain’s continued struggle to win over, let alone rally conservative Republicans signals trouble on the horizon for his campaign and prospects in the general election. McCain is likely to enter the race with only tepid enthusiasm among the GOP base while holding the party banner of an unpopular president; squaring off against a candidate whose youth, rhetorical gifts, financial backing and online support alone could prove insurmountable, let alone the fact that Democrats appear determined to retake the White House and in Obama appear to have found a candidate they can rally behind.

The race among Democrats to choose their favorite presidential candidate is still wide open as we head towards Super-Duper Tuesday next week. With the extremely compressed primary calendar the race seemingly changes overnight as the final candidates jockey to capture the spotlight and sustain momentum earned by early state wins.

The charts below compare daily traffic to the leading candidates’ websites from late December until January 9th, spanning the run up to both the Iowa Caucus and the New Hampshire primary. The first looks at nationwide interest in the candidates, whereas the latter charts focus on the candidates’ share of traffic among Iowa and New Hampshire residents.

Highlights

• As previously noted, Barack Obama’s base-building efforts have helped him outdraw rivals online for the better part of the past year. The data above suggests the Iowa caucus was truly neck and neck leading up to the vote. Note that on January 1st, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and John Edwards attracted nearly identical shares of Iowans to their websites. The following day; however, voters seemed to break in mass for Obama. His stunning early defeat of the Clinton machine propelled Obama to national attention and helped him attract 180,000 visitors to BarackObama.com the next day.
• Obama’s post-Iowa surge also caught the attention of voters in the Granite State. After attracting an average daily share of just 24% of New Hampshire visitors pre-Iowa, Obama’s share jumped to 37% on January 4th before peaking at 54% on January 5th. The days between Iowa and New Hampshire were filled with doom and gloom for Clinton’s campaign with most pundits and polls predicting a land-slide defeat, and potentially the end of the line for her candidacy. From the data above, however, it is clear that Clinton’s all-or-nothing efforts in New Hampshire in the final days before the primary, as well as a well-timed bit of emotion, helped turn the tide in her favor. Obama maintained his lead over Clinton until just one day before the vote. Had Obama been able to hold on, the outcome and significance of Super-Duper Tuesday might have been very different.

The American public’s increasing interest in the presidential election helped the candidates increase their online FaceTime with voters by an average of 25% in December.

Ron Paul continued to lead all candidates while Mike Huckabee’s surge continued thanks, in part, to publicity surrounding his controversial Christmas message. Mitt Romney’s speech on his faith helped the former Massachusetts Governor double his FaceTime from November, the largest percentage gain for any candidate. Among Democrats there was evidence of an Oprah Winfrey-aided pre-Iowa surge for Barack Obama, whose FaceTime increased 79%, while rivals Hillary Clinton and John Edwards lagged.

The table below shows each candidate’s FaceTime in December, their share of their party’s FaceTime, and the percentage of all hours spent with a candidate that occurred on his or her official website; the latter being a bellwether of grass-roots support. Following the table are charts comparing monthly FaceTime share by candidate during the past year.

December Highlights:

• Obama’s success in rallying grassroots supporters started paying handsome dividends in December as he grabbed nearly half of his party’s FaceTime. What’s more, 40% of Obama’s FaceTime occurred on sites other than his official website. In fact, the amount of FaceTime Obama earned offsite rivaled Clinton’s total FaceTime which was up only 4% last month. Since announcing her candidacy last January, Clinton has failed to captivate supporters as evidenced by her inability to significantly grow her web presence. Her site traffic has trended at levels reached a year ago in contrast to rivals from both parties who over the past year have increasingly expanded their online footprints.




• Religion had a noticeable impact on the GOP side of the election in December. Mitt Romney’s long anticipated speech on “Faith in America,” in which he defended his Mormon faith, helped him attract 120% more visitors to his website and double his FaceTime. Rival Mike Huckabee set off a conspiracy firestorm that generated more free publicity for his cash-strapped campaign with his “What Really Matters” (a.k.a. floating cross) video. Thanks in part to the video, Huckabee grabbed 31% of all GOP FaceTime last month.




• Rudy Giuliani’s risky decision to skip the early contest states and wait until Super Duper Tuesday on February 5th to make his move, contributed to the former New York mayor ranking at the bottom of all of the top tier candidates in terms of FaceTime in December, down 19% from November. If Giuliani can’t muscle GOP FaceTime away from rivals in January, he could be severely handicapped by the time next month’s 24 state battle royale arrives.

Sitting at home over the holidays, working a bit, and watching television, I was inundated with New Hampshire presidential candidate ads. Already? With the Iowa Caucus on January 3rd and New Hampshire 5 days later on the 8th, my immediate question was, “What does our panel data say about these two events and what predictions can I make?”

I looked at 5 consecutive days of consumer internet behavior, immediately prior to the Iowa caucus, to analyze user visits to the presidential candidate sites. As expected, nationwide, Iowa users were the most politically active, with one out of five Iowans actively looking at campaign websites followed by 6.5% of people from all of New Hampshire.

Based on the traffic that each candidate site received, Compete definitely had the inside scoop on user clicks, and would have accurately predicted the results in Iowa. The percentage of visits across the sites for all candidate sites show:

As New Hampshire prepares to go to the polls tomorrow, the results of the Iowa Caucus appear to have had a direct impact on New Hampshire users’ interest in the candidates’ websites. This interest could be curiosity or it could be an indicator of tides turning, as shown in the chart below. Data was aggregated at 3 different period intervals for the last 10 days.

If we base votes on site visits alone, then we predict Obama and McCain as the New Hampshire primary winners.

And one more fun fact, early indicators show Obama winning the Michigan primary on January 15th for the Democrats, and Huckabee and Paul too close to call for the Republicans. But then again, the tide can turn, as shown above.

In an amazingly short period of time Mike Huckabee has vaulted into contention for Iowa’s GOP delegates and with them a springboard into the follow-on contests in other states. After Fred Thompson failed this past fall to capitalize on the one-time excitement among conservatives for his would-be campaign, Huckabee’s populist message, evangelical appeal, and glowing early press coverage catapulted him to the ranks of the top tier candidates. Of course, with the increased attention has come significantly more media and rival (read: Mitt Romney) scrutiny of his past statements and record as Governor of Arkansas.

From an online perspective at a national level, interest in Mike Huckabee, as judged by Compete’s Attention metric (time spent on his campaign website as a share of all time spent online in the U.S.) reached its zenith on December 3rd, exactly one month ahead of tomorrow’s Iowa caucuses. Since then, online attention in the former Baptist minister has dropped significantly, reaching its lowest point in December on Christmas Day (of all days). While Huckabee has rebounded somewhat over the past week and continues to gain more attention than his GOP rivals (with the exception of Ron Paul), it’s worth asking what might have been.

Had the Huckaboom peaked closer to today, Huckabee might have come out of practically nowhere to stun Romney in Iowa. Now after leading Iowa polls for nearly a month, Huckabee is expected to win, and with relatively little organization outside of the Hawkeye State, anything other than victory in Iowa could mortally wound his candidacy. In this historic race for the White House, as in life, timing certainly is everything.