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Daily Digest: Mapping the Primary Results

BY Joshua Levy | Tuesday, March 4 2008

We’re here at the Politics Online conference in Washington, D.C., seeing many of our good friends (and loyal readers) in person. Thus your fevered wait for today's digest.

The Web on the Candidates

  • If you aren’t up for staring at CNN.com and waiting for it to refresh all night long, Google’s mapping the primary results. Their tool has gotten better since Super Tuesday, and now you can zoom all the way down to the precinct level to locate results. Add in a little Politweets action for constant updates, and you can have a network-free night.

  • In an otherwise sharp piece about Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama’s rapid video production skillz, New York Times reporter Brian Stelter calls Clinton’s “red telephone” ad (600,000 views on YouTube) and Obama’s mimicked retort (more than 200,000 views) “the first breakout hits of the YouTube campaign.” Really? After the Vote Different and Yes We Can videos, Hillary’s Sopranos spoof, Bill Richardson’s job interview ads, and other influential videos, these are the first hits?

  • Wired’s Sarah Lai Stirland continues the “Obama is Mac, Clinton is a PC” thread, which, she reminds us, started almost a year ago with Phil de Vellis’ Vote Different video, but she adds some complexity to the argument. “Senator Barack Obama’s presidential campaign is trying to change the way politics operates in this country in the same paradigm-shifting fashion that Apple tried to change personal computing back in 1984,” she writes. But unlike Apple asking consumers to buy products, Obama needs voters to get involved in his campaign, and in politics in general. “Not just at the moment of inspiration, or on the campaign trail, but also consistently over time throughout the political process.”

  • A couple of weeks ago we reported that Dave Winer was looking for a way to aggregate -- and post as podcasts -- mp3’s of candidate/press conference calls. Swampland's Ana Marie Cox has posted a recording today, and we hear that Winer should get an RSS feed of the calls up shortly, which will make it really easy to grab hold of campaign spin, wrassle it to the ground, and force out the truth. Or something like that.

  • On this, possibly the biggest day of the campaign (didn’t we already say that about a month ago?), our Hitwise charts indicate that Barack Obama has by far the highest share of online traffic of all the candidates, with 48% of all traffic to candidate sites going to his. Hillary Clinton follows, with a share of 28%, followed by Mike Huckabee with 10%. Apparently John McCain is such a known quantity that, even though he’s the presumptive nominee, he’s getting less than 10% of all traffic.

  • While Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton continue to duke it out for the Democratic nomination, Robert Greenwald’s Brave New Films has been steadily attacking John McCain in their stead, and people are watching. Over a million people have now viewed their anti-McCain videos. Pretty impressive.

  • Remember that mysterious pro-Clinton website called Hillaryis44 that attacked Obama way back in 2007, when no one dared do so? The Politico’s Ben Smith snuffed out the site’s creator. It’s Alex Rodriguez, the Yankee third-baseman a New York activist with no apparent connection to the Clinton campaign. Now you can sleep at night.

The Candidates on the Web

  • Barack Obama’s campaign sent out an email today boasting that their supporters have made over 1.5 million calls to voters “in today’s crucial primary states.” Obama’s handy phonebanking application is the tool behind the success, and they’ve renewed their effort to reach out to voters today — the application gives supporters a list of 20 Ohioans to call, which will no doubt help bump that number up towards 2 million calls.

In Case You Missed It…

Ari Melber and the Nation’s Susannah Vila discover that while Barack Obama may be the hottest politician online, when it comes to unfiltered Internet commentary, nobody beats John McCain. His official websites allow more dissent and tough feedback than any of the Democratic candidates. But is that by accident or design?

News Briefs

RSS Feed friday >

Google to Charlie Rangel: You Are Dead to Me.

Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-NY) might be facing particularly challenging reelection odds this year, at least acording to Google: based on its new Knowledge Graph interface, the search engine says that the very-much-alive Congressman died on November 20, 2004, as Colin Campbell first reported for Politicker via Azi Paybarah and Anthony Adragna. GO

friday >

Roemer to Americans Elect: Thanks Anyway

Americans Elect announced recently that it would suspend its online candidate selection process, leaving organizations in several states with an open slot on the ballot. Naturally, potential candidate Buddy Roemer is not enthused. "I am taking the next few days to review with supporters how best to proceed from here," he says. GO

Chris Anderson Says That Nixed TED Talk Was Rated "Mediocre," Links To It Anyway

TED's Chris Anderson responds to criticism of how his idea-spreading operation handled a talk about inequality — and posts video of the talk online. GO

Was the "Ricketts"/Fred Davis Obama-Wright Ad Pitch a Good Deal?

As if the content of the now-discarded plan for a new Super PAC-funded attack campaign against President Barack Obama wasn't controversial enough to grab attention — it would revive attempts to link President Obama to the controversial Rev. Jeremiah Wright just before the beginning of the Democratic National Convention this summer — the now-discarded plan featured a two-page pitch for a pricey social media component meant to boost its exposure. GO

Facebook's Growing Political Importance, Visualized

To commemorate Facebook's impending IPO, the Sunlight Foundation's* reporting group has a new story chronicling Facebook's increasing political spending. Accompanying the story, though, is an instance of their Capitol Words tool that shows Facebook's increasing relevance in Congress as well. GO

TED: Some Seattle Billionaires Have 'Ideas Worth Spreading'; Some Don't

A year ago, Microsoft mega-billionaire Bill Gates gave a talk at TED about state budgets and education funding, entitled "How state budgets are breaking US schools." It was an attack on state budgeting practices. All but one of the fifty states are supposed to balance their budget, but Gates argued that most states used gimmicks "that ... GO

Summer Olympics to Stream Live From the UK — For Some

The BBC announced its plans yesterday to broadcast its live Olympics coverage of London's Summer games to PCs, mobile-devices and Internet-connected televisions, Reuters reported.

With a free Olympics application for Apple and Android phones, the BBC says it will be offering up to 24 live streams and video highlights clips, and plans for over 2,500 hours of live programming ... that is only available to viewers in the UK. NBC also plans to stream online, but the majority of free viewing of the Olympics will only be available to existing cable TV subscribers.

GO

CNN's "Erin Burnett OutFront" Will Have Some Tech-Politics Commentators

This should be interesting: CNN nightly news program Erin Burnett OutFront is out with its list of political commentators for the general election. Some of the names are familiar in Internet-politics-land. The gang includes Upworthy's Maegan Carberry, who was previously director of communications at Rock The Vote; Sasha Issenberg, who ventures into our corner of the political world frequently while documenting the new science of political campaigns for Slate; and Ben Smith, veteran political blogger turned BuzzFeed's top politics editor.

GO

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