Filed under: 2008 Elections, A-List Bloggers, Abraham Harrison LLC, Activating Bloggers, Blog Messaging, Blog Strategy, Blogads Advertising, Blogger Activation, Blogger Effect, Blogger Influence, Blogger Outreach, Blogosphere, Blowback, Election Strategy, Online Polling, Online Strategy, Political Blogs, Political Strategy, Polling Data, Popular Culture

I don’t understand how certain story submissions pass the smell test.

In a release yesterday, Reuters reports, in an article written by Ellen Wulfhorst, that “Most Americans Don’t Read Political Blogs”. No shit. There is so much wrong with this article that I barely know where to start.

The story was based on a poll by Harris Interactive that found “Only 22 percent of people responding to the poll said they read blogs regularly, meaning several times a month or more, according to the survey conducted by Harris Interactive.”

First of all, it attempts to frame the story right in headline. I think most people, or perhaps more importantly, most online political types would not be surprised of the fact that most adults don’t read political blogs. I don’t know of one legitimate consultant who has said otherwise.

It then says “only” 22 percent of American adults regularly political blogs - meaning several times per month. I don’t know why the word “only” is used. It creates bias, making the number appear to be paltry.

You then have to go the second page of the article to find that this was strictly an online poll. That means the whole spin of the poll is skewed. It’s not about “most adult Americans”, it’s “most online adult Americans”…making that 22% actually SMALLER. And an online poll is self-selected, which skews it even further. In what direction is anybody’s guess.

But if we stick with what we’ve got - that 22% of online adults who responded to this poll regularly read political blogs, we’re looking at an impressive figure. More than 1 in 5 of these Americans get at least part of their political information from blogs. Blogs that are conversational. Blogs that are opinionated. Nothing to sneeze at.

No Comments » Posted on March 12th, 2008 by Jonathan Trenn

Filed under: 2008 Elections, Cult of Personality, Election Strategy, Political Strategy, Polling Data, Polling Strategy, Popular Culture, Social Graphs, Social Meda, Social Media Index, Social Networking, Social Networks, Social News, Twitter

I’ve been looking at the graph that Twitter has given us for candidate mentions on Super Tuesday.

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The first thing that jumps out at me is the dominance of Barack Obama. The entire time he is the most mentioned candidate. At no time throughout the entire day is he overtaken by anyone else. What does this mean? I’m not sure. Is it because of popularity or is it because of the newsworthiness of his candidacy? Obviously, it’s some sort of combination.

What’s also interesting is the person with the second highest peak: Mike Huckabee. He’s been dissed by the mainstream media ever since New Hampshire. To me, that’s a combination of my belief that the mainstream media can’t relate to a evangelical Christian, along with the GOP delegate assignment system of winner take all. He’s done better in votes and on Twitter than most would be willing to give credit.

Hillary and McCain show no strength. That’s particularly for Clinton. You’d think she’s be mentioned more often in discussion regarding Obama. Pehaps this shows she, in comparison was a non-entity.

Here’s a telling stat that may show why:

Barack Obama has 6793 followers and he is following 6661 people.
Hillary Clinton has only 627 followers and is following 0 people.

Zero. Zilch. Nada. Nobody.

I’m not saying that this is why she is likely to lose the nomination, but I will say it does reflect an overall approach and mentality - a top-down mentality - that has just about killed her chances to be the next president of the United States.

1 Comment » Posted on February 27th, 2008 by Jonathan Trenn

Filed under: 2008 Elections, Cult of Personality, Election Strategy, Political Blogs, Political Strategy, Polling Data, Polling Strategy, Popular Culture, YouTube, YouTube Marketing, Youth Market

techPresident’s got a potentially telling compilation of stats regarding overall internet activity involving John McCain’s candidacy. In short, it doesn’t bode well for the Republican frontrunner. These stats were taken before the ridiculous NYTimes story that caused an uproar.Candidate Website Traffic

Presumably, website visits show the level of interest that people have in learning more about a candidate, their background, and their stances on issues. I’d say a candidate’s site serves as the anchor of the entire online operation. Hitwise tallied the total number of visits to the three remaining GOP candidates - McCain, Mike Huckabee, and Ron Paul - and divided them up percentage wise. Here’s what they got:

Huckabee 50%
McCain 26%
Paul 25%

Now let’s take a look at the how all the candidates of both parties stack up against one another:

Barack Obama 44%
Hillary Clinton 26%
Mike Huckabee 16%
Ron Paul 8%
John McCain 8%
Mike Gravel 1%

McCain has gotten half of what his now leading primary opponent is getting. He’s getting less that one-third of what Hillary Clinton is getting. And Barack Obama, his likely opponent in the general election, is getting over 500% more visits.

Read more…

2 Comments » Posted on February 25th, 2008 by Jonathan Trenn

Filed under: 2008 Elections, Abraham Harrison LLC, Cult of Personality, Facebook, Google PageRank, MySpace, Political Blogs, Political Strategy, Polling Data, YouTube

Take a look at the online connection stats of the six remaining presidential candidates:

I got the above graph from a post on the Bivings Report from Hosam el-Aker.

While a lot can be derived from it, I’m going to make a quick observation on Ron Paul’s campaign. As you can see, he’s one of the most visited, connected, and friended online presences of all the candidates. Yet he lags far behind in the polls. Some will then question the power of the internet because of this.

I say that view is shortsighted and mistaken.

I bet that if you gauge they percentage of Ron Paul supporters who are involved with his campaign in some way online, said percentage would be astronomic as compared to the other candidates. The point there is that the other candidates have support both online and offline.

This likely means the demographics of his supporters are both internet savvy but not very influential. And his message, while unique and compelling, doesn’t resonate beyond his base. Digital strategies aren’t going to change that.

So I’d suggest that the Paul situation is not indicative of the power of or the weakness of a candidate, it just merely reflects the way support flows and ebbs in the offline arena as well.

The seemingly out-of-whack stats here are about passionate followers of a unique candidate who has a limited appeal.

1 Comment » Posted on February 5th, 2008 by Jonathan Trenn

Filed under: Brand Intelligence, Focus Groups, Online Brand Intelligence, Online Intelligence, Online Monitoring, Online Polling, Polling Data, Polling Strategy

Polling and focus groups are like observing the behavior of the chimpanzee in captivity — you have a living, breathing, chimpanzee, but you have one that is under stress, duress, and has been partially acclimatized to appeasing its handlers — it wants to keep safe, it wants to be fed, and it wants to get out — so observing chimpanzee behavior in captivity is like observing consumer or market behavior in focus groups — you have real-live response, but you have the response of something that is beholden to you, that is wondering what’s in it for me — you have corrupted behavioral data.

Read more…

No Comments » Posted on November 18th, 2007 by Chris Abraham


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