Super Tuesday Watch Round-Up
Before republican and democrat voters from 24 States reach the voting booths on this Super Tuesday, we offer a brief state of the political webosphere round-up.
The progressive community online
In the final run-up before Super Tuesday, it seems the US progressive webosphere is trying to deal with all the polls, debates, campaign news and trails in the 20 or so States that will have a say today. As a result large media outlets such as USA Today or the Washington Post receive a lot of attention and interest from bloggers. One might suppose that where these media outlets have the expertise, money and manpower to cover all the issues at stake in an insightful and documented manner, bloggers don’t have a similar claim to exhaustiveness.
Tu put it in a nutshell, bloggers from the progressive community seem to react, comment and debate upon materials drawn from the ultimate common opinion ground: the Mass Media.
Obviously, websites (Dailykos, TPM, Huffington Post, etc.) within the progressive community that are more akin to participative media outlets than to individual blogs offer perspective and substance, in line with what mass media offer - and maybe with even more insight, see here for an interesting Op-Ed.
There are some interesting conversations about the whole primary process: the undecisive character of the democratic primaries caused by the proporitional rule and the part played by the superdelegates - of whom Hillary Clinton seems to have won more to her candidacy than Barack Obama has, although some say the winds might be changing.
The debate is not so much on who’s the best candidate of Clinton or Obama, it’s rather focused on who’s doing the best campaign. It seems the lack of fundamental policy differences between the two and their focus on style (hope, change, experience) over substance has led many in the webosphere, but not all (see here and there as well for examples of opinionated posts), to comment the campaign rather than plainly endorse a candidate.
The buzz is clearly mounting on Barack Obama’s campaign. Although opinion polls show the candidates neck in neck, many pundits say he could take over Hillary Clinton in some key States. As far as the Hispanic vote is concerned, a good number of media and social media sites believe the obstacle that stands in senator Obama’s way is not so much that his candidacy does not engage Hispanic voters but that he has yet to gain the widespread visibility that senator Clinton enjoys among this community - the Washington Post has offered a series of articles with respect thereof.
Hence, after having raised an impressive 32 million dollars in January, senator Obama’s campaign move to spend over 10 million dollars in advertisements seems like a smart move to raise awareness on his candidacy - see Obama’s SuperBowl ad on YouTube.
The webosphere is abuzz (here and there as well for instance) with the number of high-profile endorsements the Illinois senator is getting, both from superdelegates (the Kennedys) and from progressive movements or media (LA Times, MoveOn, LA Opinion). It should be noted that the political webosphere has put into emphasis those endorsements that may bridge the gap between Obama and the Hispanic community, notably in California.
Overall, Barack Obama’s candidacy seems to be gaining momentum and could thus emerge in a leading position after all the Super Tuesday States have had their say - not necessarily in terms of number of delegates, but with respect to his chances in the race with favorably-looking primaries upcoming in February. With respect to large States such as California, New York and Illinois, Barack Obama’s share of voice is often double that of Hillary Clinton in the US progressive webosphere. Once more, these figures should not be construed as opinion polls. However, they both reveal and exagerate trends that have always been both hard to factor in traditional opinion polls and very important in deciding the outcome of an election.
The following chart from Pollster.com clearly shows the pendulum shifting from Clinton to Obama in opinion polls (with black dots representing the latest polls).
The conservative community online
To an external observer, a substantial part of the conservative online community forms a hunting party going after mild republicans, after those whose credentials are not conservative enough. You already see where this is going. Unlike the progressive webosphere, there’s a clear divide between those who support Mitt Romney and those who are behind John McCain - with the former clearly holding the most visible online ground.
There’s a lot of media coverage for the acrimonious battle going on between the two democrat candidates, yet it’s nothing compared to what is going on between McCain and conservative pundits. Influential websites in this community have unleashed hell against the not-so-conservative-to-them senator from Arizona (1, 2, 3, 4, etc.)
Conversely, those supporting McCain (occupying a smaller portion of the territory than their opponents) have gone negative on Romney (see here for instance). There are some who wonder what the witch hunt is all about, seeing McCain as a bona fide conservative - but they stand in the middle of the progressive community.
What does the debate tell us about Super Today? Well, the “true conservative” label has been denied to John McCain by authoritative websites such as Michelle Malkin. As a result, Mitt Romney’s edge on the battleground seems to be in default, or to say it in the words often used by bloggers and media alike, it rests upon his electable character.
Notwithstanding the anti-McCain wave in the webosphere, he seems to remain way ahead in the polls. Does it mean that the most active online voices are not representative of the larger conservative base? Or does it mean that pollsters haven’t factored in the aversion towards McCain’s candidacy. We’ll soon have an answer to these questions.
