The SENSE of DU: Democratic Candidates

[FlyingSquirrel]

Ok I admit, I'm a bit OCD. I can't look at all the crazy posts here without trying to make some kind of sense of them. So I put 7 pages worth into a spreadsheet, (about 2 days worth of posts), categorized them by candidate, and made an educated guess whether the post was positive, negative, or inconclusive regarding each candidate.

Here are the results. Over the last 2 days, candidates generating the most posts have been:

Obama, 109
Clinton, 86
Edwards, 58
Biden, 37
Kucinich, 13

Candidates generating the most positive posts:

Kucinich, 46% positive
Biden, 40% positive
Edwards, 36% positive
Obama, 19% positive
Clinton, 13% positive

Candidates generating the most negative posts:

Clinton, 42% negative
Obama, 25% negative
Biden, 10% negative
Edwards, 9% negative
Kucinich, 0% negative

This of course does not include the many comments added to each post.

The Clinton-Obama fighting dominates the headlines as does the Oprah event. Clinton's negatives are striking. Among the top three (Clinton, Obama, Edwards), Edwards has the highest positives and the lowest negatives. This may be partially due to the fact that he is not currently locked in mortal battle as are Clinton and Obama. Or it may be because he is really most liked. Who knows. :-)

[1corona4u]

1. Interesting...

Thanks for taking the time to do it.

[robinlynne]

2. Actually I think it is because, as you said, he has the least negatives.

[1corona4u]

5. Eh, I'd say...

it's because people don't waste their time posting about his negatives. I know I don't.

[Nailzberg]

3. Try not to read too much into it

A few disruptors joined us over the weekend.

[flvegan]

4. Kucinich: Highest positive, least negative, but least posts.

Interesting data.

[1corona4u]

7. That's because his supporters are too busy

trashing other candidates.(well, some are anyway...there are some nice ones though...)

[Tuesday Afternoon]

6. Thanks. k&r

[bklyncowgirl]

8. A few thoughts on your findings.

Clinton and Obama supporters don't even bother to trash Kucinich and Biden--or even Edwards any more. They're locked in this two way death match and have totally lost sight of anything else.

Biden and Kucinich supporters have WAY too much time on their hands.

Edwards and Kucinich supporters are busy trashing everyone else.

No one is trashing Richardson--that's either because people want him as running mate for their candidates or they've simply forgot about him as have apparently most of his supporters (note to self--post something positive this week about Bill)

[applegrove]

9. What a great job you did. Very informative.

[Perry Logan]

10. Note the correlation between the candidates' popularity and the # of negative posts they get at DU.

[waiting for hope]

11. If you take a look - there is more positive

things to post about Edwards - almost daily something good is happening with the campaign or he is making a statement on a policy issue. That's how I see it.