Chris Bowers: As of this morning, about an hour before this post, here were the number of YouTube views for the full segment of each candidate's stint at the MoveOn.org Iraq forum:
Obama: 11,060
Edwards: 10,142
Clinton: 5,142
Richardson: 3,914
Kucinich: 2,839
Biden: 2,195
Dodd: 1,433
With numbers like these, it appears highly likely that either Obama or Edwards will "win" the forum, once the votes are counted. I wonder if Richardson will be able to sneak past Clinton for third place.
These numbers are interesting for another reason. While not exactly equivalent of a trial heat or a straw poll, the dominance of Obama and Edwards, and the surprising strength of Richardson, bears a striking similarity to the straw polls at MyDD and Dailykos. This might be evidence to support my theory from last year's BlogPac Netroots Survey:
The more frequently a netroots activist readers blogs, the less likely s/he is to have a favorable opinion of Hillary Clinton. While netroots activists who never read blogs have an opinion of Hillary Clinton roughly comparable to all Democrats, netroots activists who regularly read political blogs actually have an overall negative opinion of Hillary Clinton, at 45% favorable and 54% unfavorable.
Given these rather remarkable numbers, the $640,000,000 question is whether or not blog readers really are the influential, cutting edge of Democratic public opinion, or whether we are an isolated group that has little overall impact on the sentiment of the Democratic rank and file. Considering results from the recent Iowa poll, the recent Connecticut poll, and the Montana Senatorial primary (among other things), I am strongly inclined to believe that the opinions held by progressive, political blog readers eventually come to be shared by a wide percentage of the Democratic rank and file.
In the 2008 Democratic nomination process, the preferences of the progressive netroots as a whole appear to be slowly merging with the early-adopter preferences of the progressive blogosphere. If this pattern continues, and the preferences of the netroots begin to seep even further into the Democratic rank and file, it would significantly strengthen both Obama and Edwards relative to Clinton, and might even put Richardson clear of the other candidates outside the first tier.
The progressive blogosphere typically needs two things in order to effectively mold the opinion of the Democratic rank and file: a lot of time, and an established media with its attention focused elsewhere. Basically, in addition to the many indirect means we use to shape public opinion (influence on the media and activist elites), we can succeed in directly shaping opinion of the Democratic rank and file through a long, slow process of viral marketing. In this case, it is entirely possible that the excessive attention currently being given to the 2008 Democratic nomination process by all medias might actually retard our ability to influence the campaign. On the other hand, the elite pundit class is quite surprised at how quickly the campaign has turned into a three-way, and the progressive netroots are undoubtedly one of the prime factors in this development.
It actually surprises me that established media outlets have not written more about the rather significant difference between national and early state polls for the Democratic nomination and the preferences for 2008 Democratic candidates among the progressive netroots and blogosphere. Monitoring how much, or even whether, online and national Democratic opinion continue to approach one another will be a very interesting subplot throughout the nomination process.
Update: MoveOn member vote, overall:
Obama: 27.87
Edwards: 24.84
Kucinich: 17.18
Richardson: 12.26
Clinton: 10.70
Biden: 6.19
Dodd: 1.05
To me, the biggest surprises are the Kucinich and Biden numbers. Both are higher than I would have expected.
Chris Bowers:
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