With every poll showing the top-tier candidates neck and neck in Iowa, it is also interesting to glimpse into the web’s crystal ball. Following the predictions of Hitwise, let us consider what the US political web is saying about the Iowa caucus, with one research objective in mind: to analyze, and perhaps confirm –as we did during the last French presidential election- the correlation between each candidate’s “share of voice” on the web, opinion polls, and ballot results.

Prior to unveiling the numbers, let us first go over the methodology. We have measured the number of quotes and mentions of each candidate with respect to mentions of the Iowa Caucus against our dataset of the 2000 main sites and blogs of the US political web. To be fair, those quotes and references are not qualified, in terms of positive or negative language; this is essentially a quantitative measure of the level of buzz on a select sample of the most politically active and influential sites and blogs on the US web.

Generally speaking, the web is highly reactive to news coverage and events, and thus acts as an amplifier, often yielding previous insights. When focusing exclusively on the chatter over the past 10 days, Hillary Clinton seems to dominate the Democratic side of our dataset of sites, with 31% of share of voice, closely followed by Barack Obama (29%) and John Edwards at 26%.

When looking at Edwards’ share of voice stats over the past 2 months, one can only notice his impressive online surge, apparently confirmed by recent investments in additional servers by the campaign (http://marcambinder.theatlantic.com/archives/2007/12/a_real_edwards_surge.php), albeit not sufficient to leap ahead of the top two Democratic contenders. Conversely, Hillary Clinton seems to have lost some virtual ground since November, considering she once culminated at 42% of share of voice between November 10 and November 19.

On the Republican side of things, the matter isn’t straightforward either. In the last 10 days, the Republican political webosphere (all the Republican sites in our 2,000 sites dataset) has confirmed the “Huckaboom” by putting him at the top of the charts with a 26% share of voice. Mitt Romney follows with a solid 24% while John McCain and Fred Thompson are lagging behind, respectively with a 16% and a 13% share – the latters’ voice shares being slightly better than their standings in the Iowa polls. Again, if we take a look at the trends over the last 3 months, we’ll notice that Huckabee rose over his competitors at the beginning of December, both online and in the polls. Giulani’s steady decline in the polls in the last months compares with his diminishing share of voice among the Republican online community.

To sum it up, here is the share of voice for each one of the leading candidates:

Republicans

Mike Huckabee 26%
Mitt Romney 24%

John McCain 16%
Fred Thompson 13%

Democrats

Hillary Clinton 31%
Barack Obama 29%
John Edwards 26%

Now, let us wait for the first actual results.

With less than a year to go before election day, the battlefield is already crowded with troops. The Republican and Democrat primaries have brought all supporters and cybersupporters in the debate. Whereas a few months ago American candidates were sending envoys to France to spot the presidential netcampaign’s best practices, they are now the ones steering the wheel, finding new ways to campaign online, pushing further the borders of traditional politics. The netcampaign will take place in every corner of the Internet, from the now ancient e-mails and newsgroups to the new web 2.0 community sites and apps such as Twitter or Digg. It will visit both the most crowded spaces such as YouTube, MySpace or Facebook and the most confidential and secluded - what about some political debating in Lake Ontario’s fly fishing newsgroups? And of course it will still happen within the blogosphere, on thousands of opinion outlets held by supporters, journalists, candidates, writers or citizens. Continuously or from time to time, they will carry, consider or mix the impressive flow of texts, images and sounds published daily by the mass media and, more and more, by their peers.

What do we offer? Some perspective on this very dense flow of opinions. The ability to apprehend the size of this phenomenon by measuring it.

The first measures are made by the topographic surveyor: measure a territory, draw its borders, distinguish its vicinity, spot the highs and lows. The first territory we have mapped is not the multi-dimensional Internet, with too many fronts to cover at the same time! No, the first territory we’ve mapped is the political blogosphere, the territory of all the blogs that will follow and take part in this election. Maybe we should talk about the political webosphere as all the blogs contained therein are not isolated from their hypertextual environments, from sites they link to and they’re linked from. It is this whole ecosystem of intertwined websites that we’ve represented and that we’ll monitor in 2008.

Last spring, we mapped the French political webosphere within the context of the 2007 presidential election. The most astonishing part is that the pulse of this territory, as shown in the map and the various monitors we had set up, actually gave a very good idea of the final outcome, with the ones leading the race on the Internet actually leading the polls. Hence, we suggest you keep a close eye on Presidential Watch 2008 all along the year!

The troops are now ready and trained, the battlefield is before us. Let the political strategists unfold their maps and their most ambitious tactics.