Much of what we discuss in the blogosphere about the 2008 election is anecdotal. Of course, when the latest poll clears the wires we wax scientific but the core element of our discussion is usually one of reason, persuasion and argument, not science.

But when you get down and dirty in the academic world… this won’t fly. They would no sooner cite a post from Powerline Blog than they would from Paris Hilton to predict who will win the election.

Recent academic studies have brought to light numerous characteristics to define a classic campaign and possibly predict the outcome of the presidential primary and general elections. Let’s examine 12 of these characteristics in more detail and predict the candidates who have an advantage.

1) Classic “Type of Primary” Influences

Apparently, there are two characteristics that are typically employed in academic circles to assess what influence specific state primaries have on the nomination. The first is the lengthening effect of proportional primaries. The second is diverse voter preference. Let’s take this first element.

Alexandra L. Cooper, a profession of Law and Government at Lafayette University, produced a computer simulation to study these two elements. Her conclusion: “The simulations show that both proportional allocation and more diverse voter preferences increase the number of primaries that must be completed before a single candidate can amass sufficient delegates to guarantee nomination.”

Quick admission here. This is heady stuff and it took me about hour to decipher what Cooper is getting at. Let me translate:

There are basically three types of primaries:

1) Caucus or Conventions (CC)
2) Proportional Primaries (PP)
3) Winner Takes All (WTA)

The Democratic Party has a significantly larger number of “PP” states which indicates, according to Cooper, that their candidates will have to wade through more state primaries before a winner becomes evident. The GOP only has a handful of PP primaries which may indicate that the nominee will be solidified earlier than the DEMS.

For example, the DEMS have set up New Hampshire, Florida, and South Carolina as PP primaries. This means that even second tier candidates have a chance to win a “proportional” amount of delegates.

On the other side of the aisle New Hampshire is the only early state for the GOP that uses proportional delegates.

Then, on February 5th, over 44% of the delegates for each party are up for grabs. For the DEMS, 13 of the 18 states that have primaries on that date utilize PP for their allocation of delegates. Compare that to the GOP where no state uses a strict PP allocation and 10 states use the “Winner Take All” approach on that fateful Tuesday.

The outstanding question is: will this classic characteristic hold true for the election in 2008? Will early wins in IA and NH truly propel a candidate over to Super Tuesday per tradition?

So the prediction I have for this first characteristic: Mitt Romney will likely win the nomination if he continues his lead in New Hampshire and Iowa. Even if only a handful of Super Tuesday primaries go his way… he will win because of the predominate “Winner Take All” approach. This isn’t rocket science but it is science (according to Cooper and her peers).

Next week we’ll tackle the “New Hampshire Effect” in more detail.

Labels: election, primaries

Mason-Dixon New Hampshire Republican Primary

• Romney - 27%
• McCain - 16%
• Giuliani - 15%
• F. Thompson - 12%
• Huckabee - 5%

Pretty funny:



From the National Journal Rankings.

I could be a little confused here, but Rudy and McCain are conceding Iowa? An editorial by Pat Buchanan says that they are smart to avoid Romney in Iowa and should bank on New Hampshire. However, Buchanan sums up the essence of what this means for both Iowa and New Hampshire.

But in running Rudy and John out of Ames, Romney has shown real strength, and must now be the favorite to take Iowa in January and probably is the man to beat in New Hampshire.

To me it really is stunning that Rudy and McCain so early and readily conceded Iowa. Less than two months ago Romney was down by double digits to Rudy, McCain, or both. Now Romney is the favorite having taken the lead in most polls with some showing a double digit lead. Many analysts have explained that Romney is the only one on the airwaves, but if this were the only reason wouldn’t the answer be to just combat Romney’s advertising with advertising of your own? As Jason has explained, this is expensive, but aren’t you running a campaign to win? If it’s not worth the money to you to win, then what are you doing campaigning and fundraising?

As unlikely to outsiders as it may have seemed after the first quarter fundraising numbers came in, Romney’s fundraising is a manifestation of the support widespread support that Romney has garnered as people have met him and embraced his message. As silly as the explanations of predominantly Mormon supporters or wealthy fat-cats were and are, analysts and detractors can’t explain Romney’s Iowa surge on a narrow base of fawning Mormons or former business partners. It seems more and more to me that the first quarter fundraising numbers were indicative of things to come. Unfortunately for Rudy and McCain, there comes a time where you have to perform. You don’t always get to explain away your defeat as resulting from a “late start” or whatever other excuses there might be.

It’s also interesting to me that Rudy and McCain would bank on New Hampshire. Romney has a bigger lead there than in Iowa. Or maybe they will also back out of New Hampshire to bank on South Carolina or Michigan or Nevada or Florida. But by that time how many wins does Romney have? No, by that time it will be more than apparent that Republicans are with Romney. Perhaps they feel more comfortable with the poll numbers in Florida which look like the Iowa numbers from two months ago. How long will those numbers stay like that? I wouldn’t feel too comfortable if I were Rudy or McCain.

Admittedly, there’s a lot of time in between then and now and certainly strange things can happen, but this is a win for Romney. One of many to come.

Labels: iowa, John McCain, rudy

The Wall Street Journal has some interesting tidbits in this small little article:

After strong first-quarter fund raising and solid debate performances, he enjoys polling leads in both Iowa and New Hampshire. Though he still trails nationally, "I really think Romney is the front-runner," Dole's 1996 campaign manager, Scott Reed, says.

Romney advisers predict Fred Thompson's entry will only temporarily curb their candidate's momentum. But decisions by McCain and Giuliani to abandon Iowa's August straw poll increase pressure on Romney to score a clear win and avoid surprises by second-tier challengers Huckabee, Brownback or Tommy Thompson.

1. Romney the front runner? Not yet, but I do say he is "a frontrunner" tied with Giuliani.

2. Romney Team prediciting Fred's only a temporary disturbance? Fred has got some good early following, but it's based on personality. So Romney's team is predicting beyond southern charm and a red truck there won't be much, I am of course inclined to agree, but nothing is written in stone. So far I haven't seen much from Fred that demonstrates great speaking or fabulous ideas (not to mention his odd abortion quotes and odd questionnaire,) but I am ready to be proven wrong.

3. Increased need to perform well at Ames? You bet. Romney needs a win and a very decisive one. Really Ames will turn into (barring Fred not finding some "Regan Courage" and actually showing up) who can be the best anti-Romney candidate. For candidates like Brownback, that's nothing new.

Patrick Ruffini, talented polibiz guru, has entered the fray following remarks from Soren Dayton (Eyeon08) about my post on Fred Thompson trying his best to imitate Max Headroom.

That's a bit confusing... Let's try this recap:

• I questioned the viability of a Thompson candidacy tethered to an Internet-only campaign (or at least a predominately Internet-only campaign). I used the blogosphere as an example where outreach seems impactful but the numbers just don't add up to much. (I.E. if you rely just on the blogosphere you'll be swimming with Tom Tancredo)
  
  
• Soren counters this argument indicating that Thompson could yet wax Romney-esque, produce a gambit of "content", and/or drive a voter-to-voter approach.
  
  
• Patrick takes me to task for my reckoning of activist influences pointing to a larger outreach group if you include non-blog sites such as FreeRepublic and Townhall.com.

Both Soren and Patrick make some excellent points but I stand by my two main points: 1) that Thompson will need to press more flesh than he will Qwerty keys and 2) that the blogosphere has some influence but it ain't all that and a box of chocolates - yet - (I think that's the phrase my 9 year old used the other day ?)

I did allude to one thing: Fred might be one election too early on this. I can imagine virtual campaigns becoming the norm circa 2012 when the learning curve on all things Internet is brought to an acceptable levels.

Patrick updates his post with a cool clip of Mitt slapping down a question raised by a person citing something on the blogosphere. So yes, the blogosphere has some decent dynamic influence that, ripple-like, can make a splash; but notice Mitt's effectiveness is that he is in person, in front of a large crowd, speaking extemporaneously about a sensitive subject in an articulate and dynamic way. Then again, I was watching it on YouTube on a blog... so go figure.

Here's a chart that I produced for one of my clients that shows the various mediums of reaching and affecting an audience, along with the cost and ease of getting your message out over a particular channel. Click to enlarge


KEY
+ means positive
- means negative or difficult
+ / - means somewhere in the middle

Blogs have yet to reach their full potential of reach and effectiveness, but it doesn't cost much and it's pretty easy to do. Thoughts?

Labels: fred thompson, Internet

William Smith at Conservative Blogger has a great post on the status of Iraq's compliance with UN resolutions over the years at the time the U.S. went to war with Iraq. Of course, Romney answered a question in the last debate about whether it was a mistake to go to war in Iraq by pointing to the information we didn't have at the time because of Saddam's failure to fully comply with these resolutions. Mr. Smith even had the opportunity to ask a follow-up question at an Ask Mitt Anything Event:



Romney is absolutely right about this. Hussein was trying to walk a fine line between allowing inspectors in and giving up the deterrence that came from others thinking they had WMD. Incidentally, I was enrolled in an Arms Control class at UCLA when this was going on and regularly debated whether we should go to war in Iraq. One interesting notion that never came up: that no WMD were to be found in Iraq at all.

I highly commend Mr. Smith's blog to you and his thoughtful posting on endorsing Romney.

Mitt Romney on McCain and Giuliani conceding defeat in the Ames Straw Poll:

"You can't help but think that makes me far more likely to win."

Source, with lots of other interesting discussion of other topics, here.

TODAY June 7th, Mitt will be in DC to host the Young Professionals for Mitt kickoff!

So... how do you get in? Here's the menu (you can pay at the door) - use the fundraiser ID 588000:

• $50 - Hill Staffer (with valid ID) - click here
  
• $100 - General Admission - click here
  
• $250 - Event Patron (name appears on event sinage!) - click here
  
• $500 - Co-Host (name appears on event sinage and participation in strategy call) - click here
  
• $1000 - Name appears on event sinage, strategy calls, and you can attend the Leadership Meeting with Mitt on June 7th - click here

You can download the PDF file here to make a donation as well.

As you can see we have a fantastic group of young professionals already involved in our DC chapter.

Thursday June 7, 2007

The Sewall-Belmont House
144 Constitution Avenue NE Washington,DC
(next to the Senate Hart Building)
6:30 PM

Labels: YP4MITT

He just scared the pants off of everyone.

Recent reports indicate that Thompson is beefing up his virtual team of advisers. In fact, it seems that most of what Thompson is doing is virtual. The question in my mind is this: will Fred "Max Headroom" Thompson come out of his Internet box?

Early leaks to the blogosphere indicated that the Thompson campaign would be radically "different" relying on Internet efforts rather than "trudging through Iowa and New Hampshire". Yesterday, the Hotline reported a gambit of internet savvy Thompson-ites including Mike Turk, Jon Henke, and William Beutler. This is a very capable team.

However, this is one of the critical questions in political campaign history. Will a predominately virtual campaign make the same impact as pressing the flesh?

I remain convinced that it will not and cannot.

Take for instance two facts on the table here.

First, the reach of the blogosphere. Now obviously the Thompson campaign isn't limiting its efforts to the blogosphere but it's a good comparative sample data point to begin with.

If you look at the top 5 conservative blogs on the Internet (according the TTLB) and look at their average rate of "daily visits" you get the following:

Malkin - 105,000
Instapundit - 125,000
LGF - 195,000
Powerline - 58,000
Captain's Quarters - 29,000

Experience has shown that "Absolute Unique Visitors" (that is true warm bodies) is about a third of "daily visits". In other words, real advocates of specific blogs visit the blog about 3 times a day or more. Many times from different computers.

If we assume that 60% of these visitors are shared visitors (i.e. I visit Michelle and Powerline everyday myself) and factor in the 1/3rd calculation we get about 100,000 unique visitors.

Don't get me wrong... I think the blogosphere is the bomb! But it ain't the election bomb - yet.

One more stat. According to a recent survey from the Chronicle of Philantropy, the 20 largest charities are raising only 1% of their funds from online donations.

Now, these are not directly correlated to the Thompson campaign but neither are they anecdotal.

In short, I think Fred is one cycle too early. Relying heavily on an Internet-driven campaign won't win you the election in my mind, but it will be a great learning process.

Labels: Internet, Technology