Pack Your Bags: FHQ is North Carolina Bound

FHQ has been offered and has accepted a job at Wake Forest University starting this fall. No, not on the janitorial staff; in the actual political science department. [See above for my reaction.]

Oh well, no more red state perspective from a life-long red stater. It is nice to go back home to the Tarheel state, though.


Recent Posts:
2012 GOP Presidential Candidate Emergence

Trends in Frontloading: Bills Proposed and Passed Since 2001

The 2012 Presidential Primary Calendar (4/19/09)

2012 GOP Presidential Candidate Emergence

Now that FHQ has had a look back through the lens of Google Trends at Democratic (here and here) and Republican (here, here and here) presidential candidate emergence in 2008, I thought we'd cast an eye toward 2012. As was made clear in Sunday's post on frontloading bill trends since 2001, there is a cyclical pattern to this process as well. All is relatively quiet in terms of presidential candidate Google searches in years one and two of any four year presidential election cycle, but once the midterm congressional elections hit, the more candidate-specific searches begin to climb in number (just as in the case of the number of bills to shift a state's presidential primary). That's exactly the pattern that was witnessed between 2005 and 2008.

In other words, the expectations for this current period in the presidential election cycle should be quite low. Hey, we just finished an election! Why think about the next one? Well, some of us are much to the chagrin of others. The bottom line is that we have to take these trends with a grain of salt this far out. But just for the heck of it let's take FHQ's Elite Eight for 2012 and add Bobby Jindal and Ron Paul. Now, it could become necessary to add (or subtract) someone in later (FHQ has had an internal debate raging about whether to include John Thune, for instance.), but I'll leave it at these ten for the time being.

How, then, do things look for these ten prospective candidates in terms of Google search volume three years ahead of primary season 2012? FHQ, always a bastion of information, has adopted a more is more (as opposed to the less is more) strategy in this instance at the risk of visual overload in this one post. I don't want to beat a dead horse here, but I think that it is important to look not only at the complete time series for the year thus far (January - March at least), but to glance at the monthly snapshots to get a clearer picture of the daily fluctuations. Yes, daily. That's where this series of posts (Yes, they'll go on on a monthly basis.) will be superior to the week-by-week structure of the 2008 posts. I'll also augment the complete time series and monthly snapshots with Bobby Jindal omitted due to his Republican Response spike in late February when President Obama addressed a joint session of Congress. Jindal's data is supressed simply because it dwarfs (and even that may be understating the effect) the fluctuations for the other nine candidates. [And I'll bet you thought it'd be Sarah Palin hovering so far ahead of her other prospective Republican primary opponents.]

To the trends!

[Click to Enlarge]

There you have it. See, I told you that Jindal spike skews the data. All you can really see from that is the Louisiana governor having a really good day, Sarah Palin with a comfortable advantage over everyone for all but about a week, Ron Paul claiming a steady middling position and then everyone else clustered together. What's that really telling us other than Bobby Jindal was the talk of the town for about a week? Not much.

So let's look at that January to March period without Jindal.

[Click to Enlarge]

Ah, now there's a trend. It's still Sarah Palin, then Ron Paul and everyone else, but the trajectory that the Palin line is following is oddly similar to the cautionary tales the punditocracy was weaving in the days after last November's election. The onus was always on Palin to stay in the news and politically relevant from the far reaches of the Last Frontier. Relative to her other prospective competitors, the Alaska governor has basically come back down to earth. She's still in an advantageous position, but not like she was. If you draw a straight line from point A (1/1/09) to point B (3/31/09), Palin has lost what amounts to ten points in relative Google search volume compared to the other, in this case, eight candidates. Yes, there has been a rebound of sorts in April due to the Levi Johnston controversy and last week's right to life gathering in Indiana, but FHQ will get to that once April is complete. [For the time being, I'll leave it at this: The former had more of an impact on Palin searches than the latter.]

Palin's one thing, but what about some of these other candidates? Let's zoom in on the first three months of 2009 individually.

[Click to Enlarge]

Mike Huckabee had some significant spikes across the month of January.

[Click to Enlarge]

But he comes back to the pack in February (see appendix for a February chart with Jindal included). In the first two months of the year, a subtle (very subtle) advantage can be detected for both Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich and there are some Mark Sanford (stimulus package-related) jumps as well.

[Click to Enlarge]

Once we zoom in on March and bring Jindal's data back into account, a Jindal/Gingrich/Romney grouping of candidates in the middle emerges with everyone else struggling to occasionally break from the no search barrier. That latter group includes Huckabee, Pawlenty, Crist, Huntsman and Sanford.

Now, this is all something of a fool's errand in 2009. That I'll admit. However, there are two things to take home from this:

First, all that you see above is true to what we would otherwise expect for this period in a presidential election cycle. One election ended and most just have not started thinking about the next one. The argument, then, that most of the (subtle) fluctuations are based on media cues is a valid one. But...

This Palin trend is one worth tracking. Her potential candidacy is one that could spur a huge grassroots effort. It is also true that latent grassroots support turned active could make her decision as to whether to enter the presidential race in 2012 that much easier. Still, her success will be measured by the extent to which the Alaska governor is able to, as I've said already, stay in the news and remain politically relevant. No one excites the Republican base better than Palin at the moment, but that excitement has to be met with the construction of some national level policy bona fides without which she'll be hard-pressed to convince Republicans mindful of her chances in the general election that she can win. That, though, is a story for another day.


Appendix: Bonus Charts
Below are a few more charts I put together but didn't fit in with the discussion above. But who am I to deprive FHQ's loyal readers of the visuals? There are three additional graphs. The first shows the February snapshot with the Jindal spike included and the final two show a January/February, two month snapshot -- one with the Jindal spike, one without.

[Click to Enlarge]

[Click to Enlarge]

[Click to Enlarge]

Recent Posts:
Trends in Frontloading: Bills Proposed and Passed Since 2001

The 2012 Presidential Primary Calendar (4/19/09)

Jones Reelected OK GOP Chair: 2012 Primary Seemingly Safe

Trends in Frontloading: Bills Proposed and Passed Since 2001

FHQ does an awful lot of talking about current bills before state legislatures that would shift the dates of presidential primaries, but that is a service often done without much context. Sure, we're likely to opine on the delegate-richness of a state or whether that state holds its presidential primary concurrently with its primaries for state and local offices, but there is often less discussion about the overall success rate of frontloading bills that are proposed in various state legislatures or when in a particular presidential election cycle we would witness the most success.

Using data from the National Conference of State Legislatures' Election Reform database, I tracked the frontloading bills proposed and passed in the time since 2001 (the point to which this particular database dates back). This examination only relates to frontloading bills, and not a wider look at any bill that would shift the date of a state's presidential primary. It should be noted, though, that the incidence of so-call backloading are few and far between during this period. There is also a distinction that needs to be made in terms of the longeity of legislation. Bills introduced, not acted upon and carried over to the next legislative session are not counted in the total column until they get an up or down vote on the floor or die in committee. New Jersey and Pennsylvania, for example, had a lot of frontloading bills that appeared in multiple sessions (same bill number across sessions). A similar situation happened recently with the bill to move Georgia's presidential primary back to March in 2012. The final caveat is that this only applies to states where the state legislature is charged with setting the date of the presidential delegate selection event. That obviously excludes caucus states, drawing down the overall number of frontloading states in the process. Still, as the results charted below show, there is a pattern to be gleaned from the primary data that will, in most cases, apply to caucus states as well.

[Click to Enlarge]

During this decade, then, we see that most of the movement in state legislatures on the frontloading front takes place in the year prior to a presidential election. As is the case with the public, legislators are not terribly concerned with the next presidential election until it is almost time for the next go-round. In terms of frontloading bills passed, this is an easy trend to track: There is a spike of successful activity (red line above) in the year before an election that dies down to nearly nothing during the election year (when many state legislators are thinking about their own reelection races) and then gradually grows over the next couple of years before spiking again just before the next presidential election year.

That trend does not necessarily hold overall for proposed legislation (blue line above). In the case of introducing a bill, we see that the most activity is still in the years immediately prior to a presidential election year, but the activity does not tail off in the same way as it does for bills passed. For proposed legislation, there is seemingly a flurry of activity following a presidential election year. If we think of presidential election years as year one in the next cycle of frontloading, then we see some legislative activity (bill introductions) in the year of the presidential election (with the next primary cycle in mind and the just completed primary cycle experience still fresh) and that gradually trails off before bottoming out in the year of the midterm congressional elections.

All that leaves is a simple relationship: The closer those two lines are to each other, the more successful state legislatures have been in moving their primaries to earlier dates. To get a better idea of this, let's superimpose the percent success rate over that previous graph.

[Click to Enlarge]

Now, we're getting somewhere. The biggest overlap between the original two lines is (bills proposed and bills passed) is in the years immediately prior to a presidential election year. That success rate drops off to nothing (or nearly nothing) during a presidential election year and in some cases the year after before building up again as the next primary season approaches. At its height, the success rate across this period still only approaches about 40%. In other words, the success rate improves in those years just prior to a presidential election year, but only about two out of every five frontloading bills is passed and signed by a governor in a good year.

What does all of this mean? Well, for starters, all this talk about North Carolina and Oregon and Texas moving forward in 2012 is a bit premature in 2009. 2011? Yeah, they may have a better chance of succeeding then. But a lot of other states may be (and probably will be) considering moves by that time; states that are in better positions to move in the first place. It could be that what we're are seeing here are two groups of states: Those with comfortable unified partisan control waiting to move because they can, and states where divided government or governments controlled by the party in the White House continue to see legislators attempting to gradually gather support for a frontloading bill by continually reintroducing versions of it. Of the three states above, North Carolina and Oregon fall into the latter category. Texas, however, fits the former, but has a bill being pushed by a member of the minority party (which is the same as the party controlling the White House). All told, Rep. Roberto Alonzo might actually see some Republican support for the frontloading bill in Texas should it carry over to a future session or should he reintroduce it in the future (say, 2011).


Recent Posts:
The 2012 Presidential Primary Calendar (4/19/09)

Jones Reelected OK GOP Chair: 2012 Primary Seemingly Safe

2012 Primary on the Line in Oklahoma City at the OK GOP Convention

The 2012 Presidential Primary Calendar (4/19/09)

For the most up-to-date version of this calendar see the left sidebar under the 2012 electoral college projection or click here.

The Texas find yesterday triggers yet another update of the ever-evolving presidential primary calendar for 2012. Here again are the rules from the last update:

1. Caucus states are italicized while primary states are not.
2. States that have changed dates appear twice (or more) on the calendar; once by the old date and once by the new date. The old date will be struck through while the new date will be color-coded with the amount of movement (in days) in parentheses. States in green are states that have moved to earlier dates on the calendar and states in red are those that have moved to later dates. Arkansas, for example, has moved its 2012 primary and moved it back 104 days.
   
3. You'll also see that some of the states on the calendar are live links. These are links to active legislation that would shift the date on which that state's presidential primary would be held in 2012. That allows us to track the status of the legislation more easily (in the states that allow you to link directly to the bill status).
4. For the sake of tracking relevant legislation dealing with presidential primaries generally, but not the dates directly (ie: Minnesota potentially switching from caucus to primary), FHQ will include links in parentheses next to such states (H for House action, S for Senate action).
   

New Additions: Texas

2012 Presidential Primary Calendar

Monday, January 16, 2012: Iowa caucuses*

Tuesday, January 24: New Hampshire*

Saturday, January 28: Nevada caucuses*, South Carolina*

A note on the placement of Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina.

Tuesday, January 31: Florida

Tuesday, February 7 (Super Tuesday): Alabama, Arkansas, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Illinois (H / S), Missouri, New Jersey, New York, Oklahoma (H), Tennessee and Utah

Saturday, February 11: Louisiana

Tuesday, February 14: Maryland, Virginia

Tuesday, February 21: Wisconsin

Tuesday, February 28: Arizona**, Michigan***

Tuesday, March 6: Massachusetts***, Ohio, Rhode Island, Texas and Vermont

Tuesday, March 13: Mississippi

Tuesday, March 20: Colorado caucuses****

Tuesday, April 24: Pennsylvania

Tuesday, May 8: Indiana (S), North Carolina and West Virginia

Tuesday, May 15: Nebraska, Oregon

Tuesday, May 22: Arkansas (-104), Idaho, Kentucky

Tuesday, June 5: Montana, New Mexico***** and South Dakota

*New Hampshire law calls for the Granite state to hold a primary on the second Tuesday of March or seven days prior to any other similar election, whichever is earlier. Florida is first now, so New Hampshire would be a week earlier at the latest. Traditionally, Iowa has gone on the Monday a week prior to New Hampshire. For the time being we'll wedge Nevada and South Carolina in on the Saturday between New Hampshire and Florida, but these are just guesses at the moment. Any rogue states could cause a shift.

**In Arizona the governor can use his or her proclamation powers to move the state's primary to a date on which the event would have an impact on the nomination. In 2004 and 2008 the primary was moved to the first Tuesday in February.

***Massachusetts and Michigan are the only states that passed a frontloading bill prior to 2008 that was not permanent. The Bay state reverts to its first Tuesday in March date in 2012 while Michigan will fall back to the fourth Tuesday in February.

****The Colorado Democratic and Republican parties have the option to move their caucuses from the third Tuesday in March to the first Tuesday in February.

*****The law in New Mexico allows the parties to decide when to hold their nominating contests. The Democrats have gone in early February in the last two cycles, but the GOP has held steady in June. They have the option of moving however.

A note on the Minnesota caucuses.

Notes:
With the action (or inaction) in Oklahoma on the caucus move (see here and here), another potential shift in the calendar was avoided. As it stands now though, the presidential primary in Oklahoma will be on February 7, 2012 as scheduled.


Recent Posts:
Jones Reelected OK GOP Chair: 2012 Primary Seemingly Safe

2012 Primary on the Line in Oklahoma City at the OK GOP Convention

Deep in the Heart of Texas: The Lone Star State in 2012

Jones Reelected OK GOP Chair: 2012 Primary Seemingly Safe

Oklahoma GOP chairman, Gary Jones was reelected today. Delegates to the Oklahoma Republican Convention chose their current chair over vice chairman, Cheryl Williams by a nearly three to one margin (1282.4 to 461.6 -- Yeah, I don't know how those tenths of a delegate work either.). After the chair vote, one of Williams' supporters attempted to nominate her for her current position, but since she had not submitted her name for the office of vice chair, she was called out of order and was not among the group being voted on.

The Oklahoma GOP, then, has the same chair, a new vice chair, and after a fully charged debate, will stick with the state's presidential primary in 2012. Ho hum; nothing to see here.

H/t: Michael Bates for the tweets from Oklahoma City and the convention.


Recent Posts:
2012 Primary on the Line in Oklahoma City at the OK GOP Convention

Deep in the Heart of Texas: The Lone Star State in 2012

The Links (4/16/09): Data, Data Everywhere

2012 Primary on the Line in Oklahoma City at the OK GOP Convention

As FHQ discussed last weekend, the Oklahoma 2012 presidential primary may be in jeopardy depending upon the candidate selected as the state party's next chairman. Current chair, Gary Jones represents the status quo (and a presidential primary in 2012), while vice chair, Cheryl Williams, and her supporters are advocating a switch to a caucus. As we pointed out last week, though, that Oklahoma is lost in the shuffle primary season in and primary season out is not about the state having a primary as opposed to a caucus.

And the big names in the Oklahoma GOP seem to realize that. Sen. Tom Coburn, when addressing the convention, questioned the wisdom of taking up a caucus system and dropping the primary. The senator is also stressing the drawbacks of the potential division that could emerge between the two factions of the party. This chair vote today at the convention is seen as a proxy of the vote in the caucus/primary discussion.

Usually, I'd say let's just sit back and wait for the results to come in, but we don't have to do that. I'm not a big fan of Twitter (It seems silly to an often verbose person like myself.), but in real-time situations like this it can be useful. And believe it or not there are a couple of good Twitter feeds coming in from the Oklahoma GOP convention. BatesLine has the best numbers coming through right now, though. Here's a link to the feed.

It looks as if Jones (and the primary) is gaining a pretty good amount of support in Oklahoma's rural counties. If I have time later, I'll put up a county-by-county map of the results.


Recent Posts:
Deep in the Heart of Texas: The Lone Star State in 2012

The Links (4/16/09): Data, Data Everywhere

Now Obama's Fighting Climate Change Reform?

Deep in the Heart of Texas: The Lone Star State in 2012

I bet you thought this was going to be a secession post.* Nope, but I have to admit that I let this one slip through the cracks. A while back I touted the usefulness of the National Conference of State Legislatures' election reform legislation database. There really is a lot to see there. So much, in fact, that I've missed one Texas-sized frontloading bill. It turns out that some of the states that hold concurrent primaries (presidential primaries at the same time as primaries for state and local offices) are rather difficult to track when it comes to legislation shifting a state's presidential primary date. NCSL simply treats them as primary changes and not presidential primary changes. In other words, if you just search for those bills affecting presidential primaries, you may be missing out on some of the potential movement on the state legislative level.

That was the case with Texas. They are adamant about holding these things at one time in the Lone Star state. When I contacted the elections division of the Texas Secretary of State's office a few years back, they made it abundantly clear that in Texas, they hold their presidential primaries with their other primaries and that is that. [And thus was born a major variable and subsequent finding about the importance of split primaries and frontloading. But that's a different story.]

In 2007, then, the big story out of Texas -- in the context of the frontloading of their presidential primary -- was the burden the various proposals to move the state's 2008 primaries would put on local elections officials. That was the major reason Texas stayed where it did.** And it proved a masterstroke anyway since the state was so consequential to the nominations of John McCain and Barack Obama. [Yes, Obama. The president did win more delegates in Texas despite losing the primary to Hillary Clinton. Ah, prima-caucuses.]

That burden, however, has not deterred one of the House sponsors of the 2007 bill from introducing legislation to move the Lone Star state's primaries (presidential primary included) to the first Tuesday in February for 2012 and beyond. Rep. Roberto Alonzo (D-Dallas) during the filing period last (gulp) November (Yeah, I really missed that one.) filed HB 246 to shift the state's primary from the first Tuesday in March to the first Tuesday in February.

Now, under normal circumstances I'd try to shoot this one down like I did for both North Carolina and Oregon. In both those cases, members of the out-party are proposing frontloading bills for 2012. And normally that partisanship argument holds water, but not in Texas. First, Texas is a big state. We aren't talking about a handful of delegates here. That the Lone Star state didn't shift, given past movement, was one of the surprises of the movement (or non-movement) in the lead up to 2008. Also, in North Carolina and Oregon we're talking about Republicans pushing a bill on unreceptive Democrats. In Texas, a Democrat is pushing a bill in a Republican legislature. And by all estimates, the 2012 primary season, and especially the timing of events, is more consequential to the Republicans than it is to the Democrats. So, the majority of the Texas legislature may at least be receptive to the idea of a move. Whether it comes to pass...

Well, that's a different story.

Still, we can put Texas up on the big board now to join the other handful of states that are actually looking into moving forward in 2012 and not back like a few others. It is more likely in Texas' case than in North Carolina and Oregon, I'll say that.


* Speaking of secession, I couldn't resist the urge to draw up a Texas-less map. The electoral college map looks strange with that gaping hole and without the second of its Florida-Texas legs holding it up.
** Here's what I wrote about Texas back in the summer of 2007:

Texas:
The plan that made its way through the Texas legislature (HB 2017) to move the primary from the first Tuesday in March to February 5 did not fail because it didn't have bipartisan support in both chambers. It failed because of opposition from both in and outside the capitol. County election clerks fretted over the impact the move would have on local elections (Texas law requires that the presidential and the state and local primaries be held on the same date.). Office-holding candidates seeking higher office (including some in the legislature, no doubt) also protested because filing to run would take place in 2007 (the year before the election), which under the Texas Constitution would force them to vacate their currently held offices. The last action taken on HB 2017 was on May 23, just four days before the legislature adjourned.

Sadly, the link to the story in the original post is dead now. I'll have to try to find that somewhere else and link it back here.


Recent Posts:
The Links (4/16/09): Data, Data Everywhere

Now Obama's Fighting Climate Change Reform?

2008 GOP Candidate Emergence, Part 3

The Links (4/16/09): Data, Data Everywhere

Over the short course of the week that has been, there have been some nice sources of data released.

Pew has a great data set out now on the role of the internet in the 2008 campaign. Good to see that FHQ was one of the...

"Nearly one in five (18%) internet users posted their thoughts, comments or questions about the campaign on an online forum such as a blog or social networking site."

Open Secrets has now gone open source, opening up their rich data on money in campaigns. I've downloaded the 2008 expenditure data, but haven't had time to delve too deeply into it.

That goes for the new Cook Partisan Voting Index (PVI) numbers for the 111th Congress as well. I've got those numbers and the 110th as well and would like to do a more in-depth comparison of the changes than the folks at the Cook Report have provided. Not that there's anything wrong with that. What they don't give us in tabular form, they do provide in a nice map, though. And around here, maps remedy everything.

And to put my own (aided) contribution in, I've put together the daily Google Trends data for the top ten GOP candidates for 2012 (FHQ's Elite Eight plus Bobby Jindal and Ron Paul). I'll have something up regarding this data sooner than the others, but they all give us some data to look at in the meantime; data I'll be able to revisit at some point.

Thanks to DocJess over at DemConWatch for the Cook PVI link.


Recent Posts:
Now Obama's Fighting Climate Change Reform?

2008 GOP Candidate Emergence, Part 3

GOP Going the Caucus Route in Oklahoma in 2012?

Now Obama's Fighting Climate Change Reform?

FHQ wishes to apologize for the relatively light posting activity this week. I had a whirlwind job interview during the early part of the week and then had to return to prepare for Larry Bartels' visit to UGA (including him doing a guest stint in my political parties class) yesterday. So allow me to make it up to regular readers and passersby with some hard-hitting policy analysis of the Obama administration in the area of climate change.



It is a well-documented (yet seldom referenced) fact that as the number of pirates worldwide has decreased over time, the higher the average global temperature has risen.




Now comes this...




Yes, that's right: The Obama administration has, by sanctioning the killing of Somali pirates to save Capt. Richard Phillips, struck a blow to the cause of climate change reform. Usually quite vocal, the environmental lobby has not spoken out on the administration's move. But in a rare editorial moment for FHQ, let me say, this isn't change we can believe in. This is taking one side on car emissions and carbon cap-and-trade and another on pirates in the battle against rising global temperatures.

[Click Figures for links to original versions.]




Changing the culture of Washington, indeed.








Hat tip to big crush via Seth at Enik Rising for the pirates killed across presidents figure.


Recent Posts:
2008 GOP Candidate Emergence, Part 3

GOP Going the Caucus Route in Oklahoma in 2012?

No Caucuses? North Dakota in 2012

2008 GOP Candidate Emergence, Part 3

This is part three in a series of examinations of the fluctuations in the volume of Republican candidate Google searches during the 2008 presidential election cycle. You can find part one (the invisible primary trends among the top six candidates) here and part two (the invisible primary trends minus the Ron Paul skew) here.

Last week FHQ had a look at the development of GOP presidential candidate searches in Google throughout the 2008 invisible primary period (2005-2007). When the 2008 search data is added to the full time series a much deeper glimpse at the significant jump John McCain made heading into the 2008 contests is gained. Also, Ron Paul's 2007 gains peak once primary season commences and then decay rather quickly as a McCain nomination becomes highly likely following the Super Tuesday contests on February 5.

When the Paul numbers are suppressed (see figure above), we see that the two tracks argument mentioned in the previous post (a Thompson/Huckabee track and a McCain/Romney track) breaks down as the contests get underway. Recall, that once Thompson's candidacy failed to take off, Mike Huckabee essentially filled the void entering 2008. But that more social conservative track peaks and collapses after the Iowa caucuses, leaving a two person battle (in terms of Google searches) among the moderate/fiscal conservatives on the McCain/Romney track. Until...

Super Tuesday. Once we zoom in to look at just the 2008 portion of the time series, it is apparent that (again, in terms of Google searches) Huckabee's inability to back up the Iowa win with anything prior to Super Tuesday hurt the former Arkansas governor's chances at the nomination. Romney, despite the money spent, didn't win Iowa but was able to manage victories in several states (Wyoming, Michigan Nevada and Maine) between that point and Super Tuesday. That seems to have kept him viable in Google searches until Super Tuesday when Romney bested McCain in an Obama-esque run through the caucus states while falling further behind McCain in the delegate count because of the Arizona senator's wins in larger, winner-take-all states. The former Massachusetts governor's searches plummet after that point, coinciding with his withdrawal from the race.

In that intervening Iowa to Super Tuesday period, though, the race was on that McCain/Romney track in regard to Google searches. And though Romney dropped below Huckabee upon his withdrawal, Huckabee was more an afterthought in comparison to McCain at that point anyway. We don't, for instance, see Huckabee's search levels go up following Romney pulling out of the race. And that's what we'd expect given the way these nomination campaigns have gone in the recent past: a nominee quickly emerges and everyone else falls by the wayside.

Just for a bit of perspective, let's zoom in a bit further and include just the January to August data (dropping the general election search data). McCain searches don't reach the point at which Ron Paul was at the beginning of 2008 until after the GOP convention. But what is really striking is how much that Paul presence online deteriorates as McCain is sealing the deal on the nomination (Super Tuesday to March 4). Yes, both candidates are quite similar in their search trajectories over that period, but the key is looking at where each began the year. Once the contests started McCain searches took off and Paul searches dropped precipitously.

The other thing we gain from this is that 2008 on the GOP side provides us with a case not of invisible primary candidate emergence, but of primary season candidate emergence. And that's not something that Americans have been able to witness too often in the post-reform era. It is too bad we don't have comparable data for the Ford-Reagan race in 1976.


Recent Posts:
GOP Going the Caucus Route in Oklahoma in 2012?

No Caucuses? North Dakota in 2012

2008 GOP Candidate Emergence, Part 2