Yahoo’s 2008 Election Dashboard
While the candidates are sweating it out in Iowa and New Hampshire, Yahoo News has released a dashboard that shows the poll numbers, relative buzz (based on Yahoo search queries), money raised, and prediction market (basically the Vegas odds for each candidate winning).
At first, I wasn’t too impressed with the dashboard because it didn’t seem to have easy access to state-by-state numbers. But I wasn’t looking hard enough. A tab on the upper right corner labeled “states” gives access to all the poll number from all fifty states (at least the ones that have had polls taken so far).
As we learned in the last presidential election, national polls don’t matter much at this point. The momentum gained by good results in Iowa and New Hampshire can jump start a campaign that is lagging in the polls, as it did for John Kerry in 2004.
The Yahoo Buzz statistic shows what percentage each candidate is getting of overall Yahoo searches for all the candidates. For the Democrats, while Hillary Clinton still leads the polls, Barack Obama’s buzz is 45%, 16 points higher than Clinton. However, on the Republican side, there is an ever greater disparity. Ron Paul, polling at around 5% nationwide, is dominating the Yahoo buzz with 42% of the total Republican candidate searches.
Howard Dean was able to get a national lead early in the 2004 Democratic race largely due to his support on the internet. The Yahoo Buzz statistics reflect the fact that Obama and Paul are each party’s internet darlings so far in this race. This has resulted in Ron Paul, polling at only 5%, to have quadrupled the money raised of almost-leader Mike Huckabee. Obama, with his tens of thousands of internet donors, can raise money at the click of a mouse by sending out emails to his troops asking for funds.
After the candidates are nominated on each side, it will be interesting to see if Yahoo Dashboard adopts a Red/Blue map that shows a reflection of what each state’s polls mean in the electoral college.
Technorati Tags: yahoo, yahoo dashboard, presidential election
