Meetup and Blogging Stats as an Opinion Indicator?
Originally published in OpenP2P.com
Meetup and Blogging Stats as an Opinion Indicator?
Tim O'Reilly
Nov. 23, 2003 03:29 PM
Allen Noren sent me an interesting note the other day: "I took a quick look at Meetup and noticed the activity level for different political campaigns. Interesting datapoint." Here's the list:
Top Topics in Politics & Activism
1. Dean in 2004 (>144,200 members)
2. Clark in 2004 (>45,400)
3. Kucinich in 2004 (>18,300)
4. Kerry in 2004 (>16,800)
5. Democratic Party (>11,300)
6. Townhall (>8,400)
7. Join Arnold (>5,800)
8. March for Choice (>5,000)
9. Common Cause (>4,800)
10. Republican Party (>2,600)
11. Million Moms (>2,000)
12. Edwards in 2004 (>2,000)
13. Gore in 2004 (>1,900)
14. Bush in 2004 (>1,800)
15. Brights (>1,400)
Obviously, at this point, meetup stats aren't necessarily a good indicator of how well candidates can be expected to fare -- they may just tell us how clued in they are to the power of meetup. These stats will be more telling once meetup becomes a standard part of the organizer's arsenal. And clearly Dean has a big lead because he got there first. But it's interesting that Clark has also jumped on the bandwagon pretty hard, with Kucinich and Kerry battling for third place. It will be interesting to see how important meetup becomes in the early primaries. Unlike tools like blogging, which just help spread the word, meetup can be a hands-on method for both campaigning and building a local organization.
Meanwhile, a quick check of blogosphere stats via Feedster shows that Dean has a lead there, with Clark and Kerry battling for second place, and Kucinich a distant third. Here's what I get when I search Feedster for each candidate's name (as a quoted string):
Howard Dean - 25,724 blog mentions
Wesley Clark - 7,624
John Kerry - 7,382
Dennis Kucinich - 3334
Once the voting actually starts, it will be interesting to see how the primary standings correspond to the early internet indicators. Do these indicators lead or simply trail the buzz from other sources?
Meanwhile, in a perhaps more telling show, the Fundrace Money Map shows us that Bush's fundraising is far more evenly distributed across the country than Howard Dean's, which is concentrated in a small number of states. (Thanks to Dave Winer for the link to Fundrace!)
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