It's December 14th; do you know where your candidate is? This is crunch time. Voters who haven't given levers and chads a thought since November, 2004, will tune in for the first time during the next four weeks. Can the candidates generate any more attention than they already have? The evidence I'm gathering indicates "no" - particularly for the leaders.
From the Chatter Rankings' inception in May 2005, total chatter hovered between 10 and 20,000 per month until November 2006. In December 2006, however, it spiked to 70,000. Apart from a lull over the summer, chatter has remained of that order of magnitude, often lower. Here are the numbers for Hillary and Rudy over the last year:
JanFebMarAprMayJunJulAugSepOctNovDec Clinton6,04712,5026,8586,9937,0127,5267,0536,5366,8437,9319,4399,780 Giuliani3,6454,4965,3004,7294,7384,4554,3623,0633,1995,4145,4605,830
Basically, the news reached saturation point a year ago, and candidates haven't gotten more (online, print) exposure than they did before. Perhaps there is more TV-time than a year ago - but wouldn't you have assumed the same about print media as well?
This is bad news for the Clintons and Giulianis of the race: they had high early name recognition and exposure, but they haven't been able to extend that lead at all. Instead, other candidates are getting a share of the news pie. Look at Mike Huckabee's numbers over the same period. He had a few big months, but mostly was garnering a fraction of the attention of the big candidates. Now, all of a sudden, "Huckaboom" is on everyone's tongue.
JanFebMarAprMayJunJulAugSepOctNovDec Huckabee4061,0719027581,3271,1192773986105821,2833,685
Perhaps the "Long Campaign" has its limits.. And perhaps we, the news-reading electorate, have a limit as to how much political flak we'll read.
This month's data:
Rank Candidate ChatterRank Change R.1 Rudy Giuliani 5,8300 R.2 Gov. Mitt Romney 5,051+1 R.3 Sen. John McCain 4,052-1 R.4 Gov. Mike Huckabee 3,685+2 R.5 Fred Thompson 3,213-1 R.6 Rep. Ron Paul 2,182-1 R.7 Rep. Duncan Hunter 321+2 R.8 Rep. Tom Tancredo 2760 R.9 Sen. Sam Brownback 153-2 R.10 Newt Gingrich 1380 .................................................................................................... D.1 Sen. Hillary Clinton 9,7800 D.2 Sen. John Edwards 6,679+1 D.3 Sen. Barack Obama 6,404-1 D.4 Sen. Christopher Dodd 1,6130 D.5 Gov. Bill Richardson 1,392+1 D.6 Sen. Joseph Biden 850-1 D.7 Al Gore 8130 D.8 Rep. Dennis Kucinich 6330 D.9 Mike Gravel 3030
Notes: The Chatter Rankings are created by searching each candidate's name plus "2008" in the Google News database. Tested but not qualifying is Alan Keyes (84).
See recent graphs of the Chatter Rankings plus Chatter Rankings from November, October, September,