Search and the US President election - Wow! A lot of search and political campaign strategists are on the panel.

Motivations in getting involved in search and politics are varied but unlike other business it never shuts off and your in it to win.

There is no budget and there is a lag in knowledge in running campaigns for search and current spending is only 40-60 million in this election, and that is a drop in the bucket of all spend.

Also, the lady from Yahoo said there hasn’t been many or any studies on campaign effectiveness and paid search. But you need to communicate directly with the campaign manager and to a lesser effect, the canditates, need to understand the utility of paid search marketing and political campaigns.

Long Tail approach (misspell Sarah Palin’s name in every way possible).

Duh! Candidates don’t seem to understand geo-targeting and micro-targeting! They understand TV and Radio and media markets, but seldom do they yet understand the precision avaiable.

McCain’s campaign is very active in gel-targeting and Eric Frenchman, who runs McCain’s online search advertising, said so.

What I don’t hear is micro targeting on the actual DISTRICT level, or anything with RSS feeds.

Interestingly, just as I wrote this, a question came up about bundling to the District level, did come up and Google and Yahoo, while they allow custom maps of Geo-Targeting, don’t actually facilitate that level of targeting.

And nothing about RSS feeds and Twitter integration on the local district level. It’s amazing to me how much of modern technology is not being utilized.

Amazing how campaigns use speeches of Biden (in the case of McCain) to a negative landing page on the candidate.

Also, Google and Yahoo haven’t yet offered geo-targeting on District Level but….. They are not, as yet willing to set up that specific a level if targeting yet, but are studying doing so in the future.

For some candidates, easing fund online is easier than others, and some times they can’t spend it all, so managing expectations is necessary.

Online Persuasion.

Do you need to be a true believer in the candidate and party ideology to work for a campaign as a search strategist for them.

However, now, there are many online digital strategists are on both sides.

Social Media and Search with political campaigns. Blog or not? Tracy Russo says no, not enough worth while content. I disagree. And Obama had people who were hired to write to the blogs, etc.

However, the community forming around a blog often continues after a campaign is over, win or lose, and, honestly, not fostering and nuturing that is foolish, I believe.

The idea that there is not much worthwhile to say is lunacy.

Twitter? Again, not as used as much as you’d think, by candidates. Amazing how much is being left, on the table, so to speak.

But, then again, I’m more of a visionary than anyone on the panel, or, for that matter, in the room, judging from the questions from the audience.

Facebook, what works? Buying admin rights for a group, Dan Steele, from Comedy Central.

Interestingly, the question of what kind of participation exists on November 5th, after the election, came up. It seems to me a new “channel” is being created via online media, Paid Search, FaceBook, Twitter, and targeted Blogs, along.

Justine Lam, worked for Ron Paul, and talked about all if that, and how it took a life of it’s own.

What tools used for monitoring Online Buzz?

Google Trends, Google Alerts, but many of the online tools are not useful, yet, to campaign strategists, yet.

Yahoo, Diane Rinalado, says Yahoo Buzz was sited as being better than Google Trends, and HotTrends, but not as highly used.

I brought up a few observations that I voiced including:

1. Increase links shown for embedded videos in Yahoo to include the long tail.

2. Data collected for Buzz Tools need to be refreshed hourly, not days or months later, as Goigle Trends and Yahoo Buzz often are.

Media Buys, as Eric Frenchman said, need to be decided in a few hours. You can see the gap.

Which campaign is doing better online?

Don Steele, Comedy Central, says he’s surprised media companies aren’t better at this yet.

Excellent Panel.

Last night at the TechSet party which is part of the Web 2.0 Conference,  I spoke to someone I know who told me the Washington Post is working on a article this week on John McCain and Alzheimer’s disease.

Apparently, there’s rumors that McCain has the early stages of Alzheimer’s and is being treated for it, aggressively.

Regardless of who is responsible for this video, the concerns are real - and the part with volumes of McCain’s medical history and only 3 hours to examine it, suggest that McCain’s real medical condition is being obscured by mountains of reports.

I watched Jon Stewart on the Sarah Palin Interview this morning and it’s one of the best skits he’s done - I guess he’s got a lot of good material to work with.   Also, Tina Fay, on Saturday Night Live is almost a “look alike” for Sarah Palin - which opens up a lot of possibilities of skits SNL can do.

Anyway, here’s the Comedy Central - Daily Show Clip from John Stewart - aired September 15th, 2008.

Recently, Sebastian who authors WebAnalyticsBook.com, and I started Blogspeedway.com, a new blog network, with a twist, we’d not only build community, but work on research, as well.

It’s all fine to talk about what Blogging is, or is not, but it’s interesating that an article on Blogging as a way into a new business published by The New York Times.

I wrote about it at BlogSpeedway.com. And while your visiting, if you wanted to blog, but haven’t yet figured out why or what, but still, wanted to, and kinda knew your should, try filling out our form.

Also, read a post I wrote recently at Blogspeedway.com,

Blogspeedway speeding along down the Internet Highway

while I was on my way to an exclusive retreat, a retreat that would never have happened, had I not been a blogger - it’s all true.

Was trying to write a post last night (in between a FeedBurner problem which I fixed on this blog) and a software update, and I lost the post.  However, what I was seeking to prove was, using Radian6 , that much of the “noise” that’s dominating the conversation on the Presidential Election is coming from the Right.

The problem I found with Radian6 is that it can’t easily segment the voices and tie it back to intent - in Web Analytics, we can set up custom segments and follow the pathing though a site, in Radian6, the closest thing one can do is set up a “source filter” but it’s too cumbersome to do it for several sources of media -it’s almost as if the data from Raidan6 ought to be able to be Mashed Up, like stuff you can do in sites such as Many Eyes, etc.   But you can’t do that today.   Still, what I found was interesting - and got me thinking about how conversations are dominated.

When I thought about it, using Radian6, I found the Influentials for Sarah Palin, mostly on the Left and Center (see below); you would have thought the reverse, based on the news.  Could it be that whomever figures out how to dominate the conversations, shout the loudest, wins?

Yes, I wish Radian6 could tell me the “Who” behind what stories are going out - sure, it can give you the “influentials” (see below)

But it will still take additional work to find out (for example) how much of what is in Huffington Post is muddying up the waters or not.

With so much coming from the Huffington Post - I wonder if the real issues of “message” are the Conservatives and Neoconservatives are simply more focused, two dimensional stereotypes that are able to succeed with noise pollution, perhaps even using other liberal blogs in a viral way.

It’s almost as if what the Barack Obama really needs now is to focus the message - use the resources he has, just like the Republicans have learnt to do - to create message, just as they do.  For all the talk, I don’t see Democrats good at that - everyone is so busy wanting their own point of view, that’s my sense of it, that they don’t come together enough to decide what the message it - and how to create their own “white noise“, maybe.

It’s not about slinging more mud, it’s using the resources you have - it’s focusing the message and using all the blogs and Social Media to push it out, into Google, into other search engines and social networks - into Mainstream Media.

The Left is really, really good at that, dominating the conversation - they have gotten really good at making a few people look like 10,000 people when they want to - I believe that’s how they won in 2000 and 2004, and partly how they think they will win today, as I wrote in Real News vs. Perception - Paul Krugman’s Blizzard of Lies post (along with an expected October Surprise - how could there not be one or two of those? - they seem to happen, almost as if on cue, just before the election, usually to the incumbent’s party advantage).

Anyway, found this skit on Saturday Night Live last night about Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton pretty funny, and very accurate, actually.  So much of real news, thesedays, is fake news.   Maybe parody is the real news today, much of what we get from Mainstream Media is “noise”, often orchestrated.

Actually, there’s nothing really wrong with having orchestrated news as long as you can get the real news from somewhere else, and as a political party, you have a way to have more input into how news is orchestrated, so at least, people get a fair, balanced point of view; but they don’t, the Right knows how to manipulate the news much better than the left - that’s how they win, I’m convinced of it now, having thought about it a bit over the last 8 years - they find a way to control and dominate the conversations, and  then, they win.

So would it be fair to say, who ever defines and controls the conversations, politically, wins?  What do you think?

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I read everything Paul Krugman writes at the New York Times and usually agree with him, point for point (I guess that gives you an idea of my views) - so when Paul Krugman wrote about the Blizzard of Lies today, I figured I’d use the Radian6 tool to see just how much negativity and lies are being thrown out there by each side.

And, by the way, it’s not just Paul Krugman saying the McCain camp is going over the edge to pull Obama in the mud, the New York Times have also reported it independently in a story titled McCain Barbs Stirring Outcry as Distortions

“….Mr. McCain came into the race promoting himself as a truth teller and has long publicly deplored the kinds of negative tactics that helped sink his candidacy in the Republican primaries in 2000. But his strategy now reflects a calculation advisers made this summer — over the strenuous objections of some longtime hands who helped him build his “Straight Talk” image — to shift the campaign more toward disqualifying Mr. Obama in the eyes of voters.

“They just keep stirring the pot, and I think the McCain folks realize if they can get this thing down in the mud, drag Obama into the mud, that’s where they have the best advantage to win,” said Matthew Dowd, who worked with many top McCain campaign advisers when he was President Bush’s chief strategist in the 2004 campaign, but who has since had a falling out with the White House. “If they stay up at 10,000 feet, they don’t.”

I guess, winning, at all costs, seems to be what the game is, here.  And where does it all stop - when is enough, enough?  And what about an October surprise, isn’t there one every October when there’s a Presidential Election?   Maybe Osama suddenly “appear” again, and say something, like he did 4 years ago, almost as if he’s doing it “on cue”.

Or maybe, just maybe, Israel will attack Iran, again, on cue - they kinda want to do that anyway, everyone sees Iran as a treat - an “October” attack … wouldn’t that be “conveniently” timed?  Or maybe it’ll be some other “surprise” - the point is, when does it all end?

While I don’t think I can entirely answer the question without knowing what the sources of the stories really are - Radian6 and other tools like it can certainly show the volume of “noise” and in this case, lies, going on.

I think it’s undeniably true that is you have a “louder” story - if you repeat a story enough, even if it’s groundless, people will start accepting it - that’s what happened with the 9/11 and Iraq connection - everyone knew it was false, especially the administration - yet the kept on repeating it so people believed it - and the administration knew it.

So what’s happening now, according to Paul Krugman:

“…Did you hear about how Barack Obama wants to have sex education in kindergarten, and called Sarah Palin a pig? Did you hear about how Ms. Palin told Congress, “Thanks, but no thanks” when it wanted to buy Alaska a Bridge to Nowhere?

These stories have two things in common: they’re all claims recently made by the McCain campaign — and they’re all out-and-out lies.”

Without breaking down “Who” is pushing out this story, which would take a bit more work - we can say that since September 9th, there’s been 2421 sources of indexable content about Sarah Palin with “pig” and “lipstick” in it - which kinda suggests that this story is drowning out whatever else is being said.   There’s also a lot more content on the Bridge to Nowhere - but that’s already peaked.

Meanwhile, there’s not much going on to correct the Obama, Kindergarten story - which tells me something - either the Democrats can’t get the message out - or they don’t realize they need to shout louder.

Because in this battle, the battle of public opinion, the perception of who is right vs. who is wrong has more to do with who can shout the loudest.

Yes, I wish Radian6 could tell me the “Who” behind what stories are going out - sure, it can give you the “influentials” (see below)

But it will still take additional work to find out (for example) how much of what is in Huffington Post is muddying up the waters or not.

What’s clear is that Political Blogs and especially Blog networks are influentials in this debate and are being used by both sides, often more effectively by one than the other.

Looking at FireDogLake Blog - which is one of the top influencers, but not the most influential among them, you can quickly see that this blog is signaling out McCain’s camp for slugging the news, filling it with lies.

But, at this point, and Obama’s camp, should realize this - that it doesn’t really matter if a story is true or not - it’s what people believe - and if you have enough of a voice - you can dominate the conversation(s).

That is what I think is happening here - and in order to counter this unfortunate, but very real reality - you need to shout even louder with the truth .. but that doesn’t appear to be happening and that is cause for concern.

“..Why do the McCain people think they can get away with this stuff? Well, they’re probably counting on the common practice in the news media of being “balanced” at all costs. You know how it goes: If a politician says that black is white, the news report doesn’t say that he’s wrong, it reports that “some Democrats say” that he’s wrong. Or a grotesque lie from one side is paired with a trivial misstatement from the other, conveying the impression that both sides are equally dirty.

They’re probably also counting on the prevalence of horse-race reporting, so that instead of the story being “McCain campaign lies,” it becomes “Obama on defensive in face of attacks.”

Still, how upset should we be about the McCain campaign’s lies? I mean, politics ain’t beanbag, and all that.

One answer is that the muck being hurled by the McCain campaign is preventing a debate on real issues — on whether the country really wants, for example, to continue the economic policies of the last eight years.

And, just in case I get more comments from readers who tell me I should just write about Web Analytics and let Obama and McCain duke it out in a sea of slime that’s being created (…. and who would most benefit from a bunch of slime? - who most needs there to be a lot of slime and false lies out there?), let me answer with the about

Execute on Being you

Viewing this video clip, which I found out about via the New York Times article titled, In Palin’s Life and Politics, Goal to Follow God’s Will is disturbing.

There is no separation of Church and State for Sarah Palin.  George W. Bush is like that too, ramming his own personal beliefs on the rest of the world, weather they wanted it, or not.

It’s one thing to have faith, belief in God, even to spread the word (if that’s what you think your mission in life is) which informs, guides and inspires; it’s another to be so consumed with a belief that your right, that people would burn in hell if they didn’t agree with you.

Judge for yourself - I’m sure a lot of evangelicals will like it - but are we so fragmented that this is what we’re going to end up with?

Does Matthew Hurst think that all attention is good?  Look at Baby Palin Brings Home the Bacon

Well.. if Baby Palin is bringing home bacon - it’s full of Worms for McCain and Palin.

Palin is, for the moment, getting more attention than either Obama or McCain!

Online reputation and identity are getting harder to define - to say what they really are at any one moment.  Just as in quantum physics, when particles display both a Wave-Particle duality at the same moment , an online identity or biography, in some notable cases, such as with Sarah Palin, becomes much more “fluid”.

For details, take the New York Times article  titled - Don’t Like Palin’s Wikipedia Story? Change It that tells a story of how a Wikipedia Editor named “YoungTrigg” subtly changed several details listed on Sarah Palin’s Wikipedia page.

But here’s the thing - after reading the NYT article and hearing others around me discuss this situation - I wondered if what I was looking at here is really really something else than “online reputation management” on steroids (according to the NYT article, Henrik Abelsson, who tracks the traffic of Wikipedia pages, said that on Friday (August 29th) there were 2.4 million page views for Gov. Palin’s Wikipedia article while for the entire month of June 2008 the John McCain article had 645,000 page views while the Barack Obama page had 1.35 million page views).

Actually, a few days ago, I wrote two posts about this phenomena at The Analytics Guru - Being Uncritically your own best friend and More on our own nariation where I  described a process which I called “self narration“.   In “self narration” the story we tell about ourselves (to our selves) defines what we end up displaying to the world.   To take my two posts a little further - I’d say the process of is really more like “metadata” that surrounds events that are, in themselves, unmeasurable (similar to “Rich Media” files, Flash and AJAX parts of websites).

What if we could take self narration to a point where critical events of online identity are subtlety changed by editing the “metadata” around them?  Is that really just online reputation management or a “fluid definition” of identity akin to Wave-Particle duality?

It’s not even clear if “YoungTrigg” did anything wrong - yet, the traceable fact (30 edits that happend on the night before the announcement, by YoungTrigg) - suggests a need to morph Sarah Palin’s online identity to fit a sudden political need (I won’t say, by who, since it’s obvious).

In other words, and according to my definition of self narration, someone decided to describe Sarah Palin differently (than how she was described before) - as if the story of one’s life can be molded like  silly puddy.  According to the New York Times article:

“… In total, YoungTrigg — whose user name is a reference to Ms. Palin’s infant son, Trig — made 30 “edits” to the article, all positive and largely unnoticed, since they came at a time when few were discussing her as a possible running mate of Senator John McCain’s.

The coincidence of the user’s name, and the sudden spurt of activity just before news broke of Mr. McCain’s choice, has raised suspicions that YoungTrigg was a campaign operative tasked to make sure that her Wikipedia article was ready for prime time, much as handlers have been assigned to do the same for the candidate.”

“…. Also, YoungTrigg reached out to an anonymous editor who had changed the Palin article on Thursday night, without any evidence, to say that she was Mr. McCain’s choice. In a public note to the anonymous editor, YoungTrigg wrote: “Where did you hear that Palin was the VP nominee? I can’t find anything online.”

Whether this pokes a hole in the idea that YoungTrigg had inside information, or rather confirms that the user had an unusually acute interest in whether the news had leaked out, is hard to tell.”

The NYT article goes on to explain how taking charge of the self narration process has become a necessary part of politics:

“…In modern politics, where the struggle is to “define” yourself before your opponent “defines” you, Wikipedia has become an important part of political strategy. When news breaks, and people plug a name into a search engine to find out more, invariably Wikipedia is the first result they click through to; it is where first impressions are made.”

But I’d like to suggest this whole process, which I call “self narration”, has much wider applications beyond the political sphere (unless you want to call everything, politics - which some people do).

I like to think the way we describe ourselves, becomes our reality - as much as the way others describe us - or an event - also becomes, to a large extent, our reality of it.

For example, the famous Hindenburg disaster, according to Wikipedia, displays some of the same qualities as

“… the Hindenburg caught fire and quickly became engulfed in flames. Where the fire started is controversial; witnesses on the port side saw yellow, red flames first just forward of the top fin, around the vent of cell 4. One, with views of the starboard side, saw flames beginning lower and farther aft, near cell 1. No. 2 Helmsman Helmut Lau also testified seeing the flames spreading from cell 4 into starboard. (Although there were four newsreel cameramen and at least one spectator known to be filming the landing, they were all recording the actions of the ground crew when the fire started and therefore there is no motion picture record of where it first broke out at the instant of ignition.)

Wherever it started, the flames quickly spread forward. Almost instantly, a water tank and a fuel tank burst out of the hull. At the same time, a crack appeared behind the passenger decks. The airship’s back broke, and the section from the nose to the aft engine cars lurched upwards, while the stern stayed in trim.”

No one really knows for sure what the caused the Hindenburg to explode, weather it was sabotage, electric sparks, lightening, engine exhaust, incendiary paint, hydrogen fuel exploding for some unknown reason, or any other reasons - because it’s not really important what the real reason was - because we’ll never know for sure.  What is clear to me, however, that our understanding of an event like the Hindenburg disaster or the Sarah Palin (…disaster - if so, for who?) is more than just manipulating facts for online reputation management - it’s more like Wave-Particle duality applied to self indentity.

I suppose you can say  9/11 is the same thing - the facts are somewhat “fluid” and leading to multiple interpretations of what actually happened;for example,  9/11 conspiracy theories abound, and some of them are quite plausible.

What I tried to say in my original The Analytics Guru post More on our own narration - is that as we have evolved our means of communications to be much more complex and widespread, we’ve become more self aware - to the extent that, up to a point, we are what we describe ourselves to be - and what other people describe us to be - and that becomes reality - our reality.

If that’s the case, as I believe it is, “self narration” might actually be a positive thing - it may give us all a way out of some very difficult circumstances (but with everything - there are limits to how much one can “shape shift” events .

Lately, I have known several people in my life that are having difficult times - and honestly, some of it is almost beyond an ability for me to see a way out for them - but I’ve also noticed, as I listen to one my friends, as I did today, that they harp back on their story of why life is so difficult for them.

And then I go back and think about “self narration”, or as someone else said once  - “you are what you think you are” (or did they say, “as a man thinkith, so be he” or something like that).

While self narration, as I called it, might not be such a great thing for politicians to do, especially those running for Presidential office, suddenly, it very well may be a good thing for people, in general, to do when they’re stuck in a part of their lives where they can’t see a solution.

Perhaps, in difficult life situations, how we describe our stories, to ourselves, primarily, leads to the perception of reality by ourselves and others.

And as far as the Sarah Palin thing - well, it was obvious that YoungTrigg probably knew an announcement would be made shortly - and edited, or prettied up, aspects of Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin’s life, so that we, the readers of Wikipedia, would see her in a more favorable light.

But the whole thing that got me started into “self narration” was painting - because in nature, there really is not light and shadow - these sensations are interpreted by the mind, by our brains.

I think I’ve said enough here - my point was that we can alter our lives by how we describe ourselves - and are somewhat circumscribed by how others describe us (but we can influence how others describe us by how we describe ourselves).

Will it help my friends?  I don’t know - but you have to start somewhere.

Since I have access to use it to figure out the influential voices online shaping the debate about John McCain’s choice of Sarah Palin as Republican VP Candidate last Friday  - here’s the list of “influentials” though you’ll need Radian6 to pull up the actual blog posts that are being listed) - the file is called sp-2.

And here’s what it looks like in Radian6

However Radian6 lacks something I think they need to add - as it becomes apperant when you try to drill down to find out sentiment for the Palin choice - for me there’s no easy way to create a set of comparision phases that accurately define the current opinions online - nor are Search Engines any help, since they just pick sort and rank phrases, not the sentiment around them.

Also, people often don’t say what they mean - when you’ve got millions of people repeating slang and common terms, it’s often difficult to settle on any set of terms that accurately defines opinion.

Another thing I wish Radian6 had, was a “nearness” or “close to” operator, similar to what Search Engines have had for a while, particularly Google - but most do have it - it looks for how close a word or phase is to another and makes a determination of relevence of the two phrases by their “proximity” to each other - there’s nothing in Radian6 today, that does that.  They should add it - but I imagine, it will add to processing time and make calculations of engagement and relevance more complicated.

Still, Radian6 and other tools like it need “Proximity” operations - saying “inexerienced” directly next to Sarah Palin’s name is different than saying “inexperienced” a few paragraphs away from her name.  In this way, Radian6 needs to incorporate some of Google’s intelligence - but that’s just my opinion - otherwise, it’s too much work to wade through every post to figure out what the sentiment and point of it is.

Another example - look at this - Scary - is Sarah Palin going to end up being US President? Somewhere else Hillary Is Smiling

But when you look at the actual posts in the “experience” category I created, you see its’ all over the spectrum - in other words, I could not get down to a filter that was sufficently precise to just those posts that expressed Sarah Palin had enough experience against those that said she didn’t have enough experience.

What would be great is if Radian6 did that for me.  Right …. Take those posts from Blogs, Mainstream Media and break them into phrase combinations - and then - offer to run those through a comparative topic monitor (shown above) for you - that way, at least some of the work of wading through conflicting opinions will be done for us.

And, another source of possible ideas for how to pick the phases you’d run into the comparative topic monitor (let alone Sentiment Analysis - which really isn’t done fully, or enough, today) is tapping into the BlogPulse Key Phrase Analysis for the day - here’s part of the analysis for August 30th, 2008 pertaining to the Sarah Palin VP Choice, the latest one at the time of me writing this post:

If we could get even to the level of content analysis of isolating phases like those above (”disaffected hillary clinton supporters” AND “sarah palin” with “good choice” or “bad choice” or something that works) we’d magnify what tools like Radian6, already very powerful, can do.

Right now, I could probably take those phrases and stick them into the Comparative Topic Monitor - no big deal - so I did that - at least for the top 6 phases - there were quite a few more but this is enough to prove a point.

Of the terms I picked “Palin pick” occured the most often in the last two days - and finally, I get to something I can use today -and can chart over time:

Look at this:

Now we have something - still very crude - but useful - perhaps, even a KPI metric we can monitor over time (were I in the political monitoring business - which I was some time - it feels like “horse racing” - sorta - handicapping the winners - too bad there’s no prize - like a million dollar ticket on a bet - oh well - just wishful thinking.

But here, at least, in the chart above, after a 4 or 5 hours of work - I managed to figure out some way to at least “filter” what Radian6 supplies, out of the box, into a “Yes” / “No” metric.

Of the content that had “Palin pick” in the last two days, about 1/3 also had the phase (experienced or inexperienced) - I filtered those out and today - it looks like twice as many voices (conversations) think Sarah Palin is too inexperienced to be Vice President than those who think she should - again, a  useful KPI (were I John McCain or Barack Obama, or running those campaigns).   If that number gets a lot smaller - if say 20% think Sarah Palin is not experienced enough in 2 months time, vs what it is today - I’d day, that’s very bad news for the Democrats.

But even here - if we ffurther refine this view of who thinks Sarah Palin is too inexperienced to be Vice President - to the top 10 influencers - also offered by Radian 6

.. there’s only one place where the debate is really being shaped, and that’s the Penny Arcade (ha!)

Whereas, for the view that Sarah Palin is experienced enough - we get three top sources where that debate is being shaped:

A lot of it (opinion shaping on weather Sarah Palin has the experience) is on the AOL Message Boards, Go My Town, and Campaign Diaries - I took an except from Campaign Diaries post, below

“…If my first post’s general sense was that McCain had made a strong move, this one is going in the opposite direction. My indecision isn’t surprising: This is a huge gamble and we will have to see how Palin performs in the months ahead, what coverage she receives and whether she can move the female vote before having a better idea of how her presence on the Republican ticket will play out.”

So the metrics, if one wants to pull out of this last statement - for how this all will play out - in some measure, might now be how well “Palin performs” and if the “female vote” of “dissaffected Hillary Supporters” actually moves over to Palin, or not - or how much it does move over to Palin.

This - the movement of the “dissaffected Hillary Supports” would be the main metric I’d suggest monitoring - via polling and Radian6 - provided you can get a decent filtering mechinism into Radian6 that pulls out the noise in the content being crawled - again, not an easy thing to do.

Right now - I’m not too happy with the map I’m seeing below - the electoral collage as it appears today - I think it’s way too close to call - and that scares me -

Let’s hope Barack Obama will use Hillary Clinton to highlight how different they both really are - it’s not just about woman in the White House - its what kind person is there - what their values are - let’s hope - because this map, is scary - I don’t care what anyone else is saying - thre’s not much Blue in the map - way too much Red.

Not good for Barack Obama - he needs to get a lot more Blue in that map -that’s my take on August 31st, 2008.