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.