Bussy bussy bussy

Updated the four spreadsheets for today. Promise I'll get some analysis up sometime in the next twenty-four hours.

Finally....

Updated the facebook spreadsheet. Rich Iott (R) picked up 1000 facebook fans in one day...absurd...I'll address that tomorrow.

The Greatest Challenge Faced By Social Media Sites

Facebook is down temporarily. I updated the YouTube views spreadsheet for today. I'll try to have the facebook updates up before morning.....grrrr

-alejandro

Updates!

        I just updated the two Twitter spreadsheets (followers and lists) on google docs. Nothing too exciting to report, most candidates saw incremental increases in followers and lists. A good number saw no change at all. The most interesting change, however, was Josh Mandel (R) for State Treasurer. Mandel is running against incumbent Kevin L. Boyce (D). In the course of 13 hours, Mandel dropped 17 followers. Boyce picked up 2 in that time, but still trails Mandel 1671 to 431.

        Here's why I'm really intrigued. According to this "business insider" article, African Americans represent 25% of Twitter users, disproportionately higher than the demographic reality. Intuition might suggest, that Kevin Boyce, as an African American should have a decent twitter following. Not the case. David Pepper (D), running for auditor, has three times as many followers. Auditor and treasurer are not entirely the same position and Pepper (from Cinci) and Boyce (from Cbus) have different bases. Even so, these discrepancies (Boyce-Mandel, Boyce-Pepper) are puzzling.

       It get's crazier. Boyce picked up 36 facebook fans today, Mandel 17. Even so, Mandel leads Boyce on facebook by 3,604 fans. Here's my hypothesis, today is Boyce's brithday (Happy Birthday Mr. Treasurer!). Facebook will tell you when your friends have birthdays, but not people you do not know. Boyce's linked facebook page from his campaign website is HIS facebook page. That is to say, you have to request to be his friend and he may or may not accept you (more on this later). However, if a number of your friends write on the wall of a non-friend third party for something like a birthday, that activity may show up in your news feed. So I believe Boyce's increase in facebook traffic can be attributed to his birthday. Also, this increase in traffic could be from people who requested friendship over the weekend. The distribution of the friend acceptances intermittently with birthday wishes suggests it's a combination of the two.

        This does not explain Boyce's lagging in Twitter or Mandel's Twitter drop. Here's what I think. Race is a critical variable in American politics. One cannot understand American History from a "color-blind" perspective as Stephen Colbert claims to. I don't know, however, how much race factors into twitter followings for a state treasurer. There are some superb comments on the "business insider" article regarding race and social media by "John Grabowski." I pray this is Professor of History John Grabowski who teaches here at Case. In the "comments," he discusses how using ethnicity exclusively to define, categorize or market something is increasingly archaic. Righteous. So despite the "business insider" findings regarding African American Twitter use and ethnicity, I feel it is a leap to assume African Americans would follow Boyce more so than another Democratic politician.

          I think we can also see the trends pointed out by OhMyGov in the GOP hitting social media HARD. This could explain Mandel's lead on both facebook and twitter.

         As to Mandel's twitter drop, I have no idea. Sometimes you're up, sometimes you're down. We'll see what tomorrow brings. It's a pleasant birthday present for the current Treasurer however...

         That's all I've got for now, the dog really needs to go out.

                 I'm going to try and get analysis on the governor's race up tonight. Thanks for reading,

-Alejandro

OhMyGov's facebook Study

Here is a study on facebook utilization by current members of congress. It is a decent study, but there are a few issues. One, it is partisan in origin, so who knows how bias it is (even subconsciously). Two, it only looks at the rate of friend increase for current members of congress, not their opponents (despite the fact it's May '10-Aug'10, campaign season!). Three, it only looks at facebook, which is a good gauge but certainly not the only means candidates use to campaign online. However, if you look at the spreadsheets here, they seem to match the results. The GOP has (generally) mobilized more effectively on the facebook front. Regardless, check it out, it provides some cool context.


On a note of absurdity, I can't believe I'm blogging about a blog....what a strange time we live in.

-Alejandro

Let's go

     There are 26 days left until the 2010 midterm election. As per usual, Ohio is a hotly contested political battle ground. A senate seat, a governorship, a host of state offices and 18 congressional districts are up for grabs. This election cycle is critical for Ohio as the winners of the state offices (namely, Secretary of State) will help oversee the redrawing of Ohio's congressional districts. We're losing two seats, someone's getting gerrymandered. On top of this, President Obama could lose all the swing states he carried in 2008 - except Ohio - and still win re-election. This election sets the political table for that fight. Both sides know this, both sides know this election cycle is key.

 So....?

     So. Technology is changing the way campaigning is conducted. Obama shattered all kinds of fund raising records (most donations, total dollars raised) through online contributions. His primary campaign, like the tea party movement, organized initially online. So here's the question, "Do these strategies have an impact on state level politics?"

     I think yes. Here's how I'm going to test this hypothesis. I'm going to keep simple Excel spreadsheets chronicling the races for Governor, Senate, Secretary of State, Auditor, Treasurer and all 18 congressional races. I'm keeping track of each candidates' facebook fans, YouTube channel subscribers, twitter followers, twitter lists the candidate appears on. Simultaneously, I will attempt to provide daily, in-depth analysis of how each candidate uses their social media resources. I'll address this analysis in terms of the race in general, national trends, and candidate fund raising. I'll try to do one race a day from here til election night. The goal is to be entirely NON-PARTISAN, accurate, and in-depth.

     There are obvious methodological issues here. Social media DOES NOT provide an accurate sample of the voting populace. People can follow or like a myriad of candidates, without rhyme or reason. People outside of the constituencies can support a candidate without issue. Social media analysis does not factor in grass-roots action or other local variables. Similarly, social media also provides no means to gauge financial resources or other media exposure. Finally, some enthusiastic supporters of nearly all these candidates have taken it upon themselves to start other support groups, post videos or tweet. I cannot even begin to amass this data.

      Despite the drawbacks, these methods work. Using analysis of facebook exclusively, over the month of August I was able to successfully predict Tea-Party candidate Carl Paladino's surprise GOP Primary victory in the N.Y. Governor's race.

Please,
     Please,
        Please, tell anyone you know remotely interested in Ohio Politics or Social Media about this blog.
    Please.

If I may leave you with the words of a time-honored philosopher,
             "Always in motion the future is." -Jedi Master Yoda


Aight, Let's go.....

-Alejandro