March 5, 2008
Let's Play Stump Speech Bingo!
Having watched the presidential candidates give stump speeches a gazillion times, it didn't take long for me to start recognizing certain phrases. On Twitter, several of us even began to joke about having drinking games every time McCain said "my friends" or Obama said "hopemonger," for example. So it occurred it me it would be fun to create some kind of game for spotting all the catch phrases they use in their stump speeches again and again. So I came up with Stump Speech Bingo. I tracked down some code that would allow me to generate random bingo cards, which I then populated with stock phrases used by Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and John McCain. Here's an example of a randomly generated John McCain bingo card:
Since my blog isn't printer friendly, you won't want to print out this page. So I created a new page that would generate random bingo cards for each candidate: Game rules: Before a candidate begins a speech, have each player print out their own copy of the candidate's bingo card. (It'll generate a new random bingo card when you reload the page.) Then, as the candidate uses stock phrases from his or her stump speech, look for them on your card. If you find a match in one of the boxes on your card, mark off that box. The box marked "BINGO" is a freebie that you can mark off immediately. As soon as you get five across or diagonally, call out "stump speech bingo!" and you'll be the winner. (If you're playing via Twitter, simply tweet the message to your friends.) If you have any questions about the game or would like to suggest other stock phrases from candidates' stump speeches, please post a comment here or email me at andycarvin _at_ yahoo DOT com. I'm also hoping to create special editions to be used at the Democratic and Republican National Conventions - stay tuned! And special thanks to Karl Geiger for making the source code of his bingo card generator available on his website. -andy
Tags: Barack Obama | election 2008 | games | Hillary Clinton | John McCain | presidential candidates | rhetoric | Stump Speech Bingo | stump speeches
Posted by acarvin at 8:48 PM
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January 10, 2008
The Potential Impact of Polls and Punditry on the New Hampshire Primary
Like pretty much everyone else, I totally blew it. Before the voting wrapped up in New Hampshire on Tuesday night, I posted a note on Twitter predicting that Barack Obama would beat Hillary Clinton by 10 points. Talk about missing the mark. (I nailed the GOP race, though, calling it for McCain over Romney by five points, but who's counting.)
At least I was in good company, as pretty much every pundit, professional and otherwise, predicted an Obama blowout. And they based that assumption on the polls. These polls leading up to the primary were generally consistent, showing Obama leading Clinton by double digits. Yet in the end, Clinton beat Obama by three points. So for more than 48 hours now, the media has spent an inordinate of time analyzing what went wrong with the polls.
On the one hand, there's the issue of margin of error; when you hear a talking head on TV saying "So-and-so leads the other candidates by a seven-point margin," they don't always follow it up by noting that the poll had a margin of error of four points, making that seven-point lead more like a three-point one.
On the other hand, we can't forget that this is New Hampshire, a place that places much pride in helping kick off what's perhaps the our ritual of civic engagement. Some New Hampshire voters consider the casting of their ballot as a strategic decision, in which they vote for a candidate whose inclusion makes for a better race, if not a winning one.
Jon Greenberg, executive editor of New Hampshire Public Radio, believes that a certain percentage of New Hampshire voters, particularly women voters, decided to vote in a particular way directly because of the wide margin in the polls.
"My thesis is simple," Greenberg told me earlier today. "The polls gave many women a tangible sense of what primary night might be. They didn't like that picture and acted to change it. Put another way, the polls, which we think of as describing reality, became a factor that changed the outcome. Ordinarily, I would not think this possible but never before have we had a primary with a strong, entirely credible, female contender. There are two elements of the NH primary that I think play a key role in explaining the outcome.
"In the traditional framework of the NH Democratic primary, Clinton was not just a woman candidate, but an establishment candidate," he continued. "If you know the work of Dante Scala, the establishment candidate always has the edge with working class voters. In Dante's typology, it is part of the definition of that sort of contender. In that light, Clinton's edge among those voters was typical.
"The other factor that is peculiar to NH is that NH voters can be much more strategic than voters elsewhere. I don't want to exaggerate this, but I don't think you can see the NH electorate during a primary as using the same decision rules as voters elsewhere. There is a systemic difference for some appreciable portion of the population - at least 10% and possibly more. They game the system.
"My theory is that you take these two conditions and throw in gender politics in a way that's never existed before in a presidential race and it's plausible that the polls themselves generated a groundswell reaction among women - and Clinton's edge over Obama would reflect that - that ultimately altered the outcome."
In particular, Greenberg takes note of the voting results from the southeastern portion of the state, and the so-called gender gap. "In terms of polling data, I'd point to the 12-13% margin among women that Clinton had over Obama. She enjoyed equally great margins with lower income and less educated voters but as I said, that's typical of establishment candidates. Less precise but intriguing data comes from the town by town breakdown. Clinton won in the southeastern quadrant of the state where you have many towns with above average household incomes. It's just my guess, but I don't think it was the lower income folks in those towns that put her over the top. I think it was the women."
And then there is the growing number of stories from the voters themselves. Greenberg has spent the better part of the last year involved in Primary Place Online, a community media initiative in which New Hampshire Public Radio created a website for residents of the town of Exeter to publish their thoughts on the election in the months leading up to the primary. Greenberg has examined posts from local women voters on the site, some of who have noted how the polls changed the way they and their friends ended up voting.
One post from a user going by the name Alewife comments on how she's begun to hear from other people who changed their votes due to the wide margin in the polls. "It's noon and I have already met three people who were undeclared voters who chose to vote for McCain so that Romney would not win, but wish now they had voted for Obama," she wrote on the site the day after the primary. "They thought, BECAUSE OF THE POLLS that Obama had it locked up over Clinton." Another commenter replied to her remark by adding, "I have also heard Obama supporters say that because Obama was doing so well IN THE POLLS, they used their vote 'strategically' elsewhere, namely to vote for McCain because they hate Mitt Romney so much."
Another user going by the name MMF explained in great detail how she shifted from being a Clinton supporter to a Richardson fan, then settling as a Clinton voter at the last minute:
Richardson was here on election eve and he was fantastic. I agree squarely with him on almost every issue. I was persuaded to vote for him and keep him in the race too. But then, a student of mine told me of these last polls putting Obama ten points ahead of Clinton. The news confirmed this even yesterday morning. Ultimately, I think it's more important to keep Clinton in the race than Richardson. These polls made me think Clinton might really need my vote and voting for Richardson would help Obama to a big win. That sealed the deal for me. I walked downtown and voted for Clinton.
Another woman named Bricci described how she was one of those voters who didn't make up her mind until the very end:
I myself saw all the candidates speak and studied all the issues that I felt were pertinent. After doing all this I decided to endorse the person most suited for the position of leading our country and that was Christopher Dodd. My second choice was Joe Biden (can anyone see where this is going)? So after the Iowa caucus I was at a loss. I read and reread everything I could get my hands on. I went and saw senator Edwards, governor Richardson and John Mccain. Still as I entered that booth and the curtain closed I was not sure what circle to darken with the sharpie. Taking a deep breath, I filled in the oval next to Hillary Clinton's name. After all the rhetoric, all the speeches, all the reading, I voted with my heart and instincts.
"Are they just anecdotes?" Greenberg asks rhetorically. "Sure, but I think they are relevant." And he's right: three or four examples don't exactly make an empirical data sample. Yet their stories are informative nonetheless.
Assuming there's a connection between the media playing up the wide margin in the polls and some voters changing their mind about how they planned to vote, it raises questions as to what responsibility, if any, the media should have when it comes to how they report their polling results. In some ways, the New Hampshire primary results almost seem like the journalistic equivalent of Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, working in combination with the so-called Observer Effect. With the Uncertainty Principle, the more accurately you try to measure the position of a particle, the less precisely you can measure its movement. And in the case of the Observer Effect, the very act of attempting to observe something causes an inadvertent interaction with it, thus leading to an unintended change in its behavior. In this case, the media tried to offer as accurate an assessment as possible regarding potential voting behavior. And by touting both their findings and the consistency of those findings, again and again, they may have directly impacted voter behavior when they punched their ballots.
"The media will continue to pay for polls and they will continue to report the results," Greenberg added. "However, I do think the media have an obligation to present polls more carefully. If I were to make any suggestion for the media, it would be to break the rule of putting the lead of the story first. If the elements that show the uncertainty of the poll were presented first - for example, 45% of voters say they have yet to make up their minds and no difference smaller than 8% should be taken seriously - and the simple comparison numbers were presented second, it might lead the audience to see the polls more realistically. I have a hunch that if the media did something like this, they could effectively encourage the public to treat all polls as hazy shadows of reality rather than as accurate representations of what's really there."
It's certainly an interesting theory. What do you think? -andy
Tags: Barack Obama | Heisenberg | Hillary Clinton | Jon Greenberg | New Hampshire primary | New Hampshire Public Radio | Observer Effect | polls | Uncertainty Principle
Posted by acarvin at 9:03 PM
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July 18, 2007
Presenting at the JFK Presidential Library
Tomorrow morning I'll be heading to the airport at the crack of dawn for a quick daytrip to Boston. I'll be giving a speech at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library on the impact of Web 2.0 and social media on journalism, particularly coverage of election 2008. Here's a draft of the powerpoint presentation I plan to share with the audience. I wish I could stay longer, particularly because the Open Society Institute is convening a forum on youth media in Cambridge, with some of my favorite people and thinkers, including Ethan Zuckerman, Dina Mehta, Jennifer Corriero and Danah Boyd. Unfortunately, as soon as my speech is done, I need to bury my head in proposal writing and related meetings. Such is life.... -andy
Posted by acarvin at 7:43 PM
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July 2, 2007
Unwelcome Questions for Dennis Kucinich and Bill Richardson
In the first part of the video, Dennis Kucinich is asked about anti-hate speech legislation, which the questioner frames as "chipping away at your constitutional First Amendment rights," irritating Kucinich. In the second part of the video, a person in the crowd of reporters harangues Bill Richardson about his participation in the Bohemian Grove Club, which the questioner refers to as place that conducts "mock human sacrifice." The questioner refuses to let up, even as reporters and bloggers in the crowd tell him to leave it alone. -andy
Posted by acarvin at 7:11 PM
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July 1, 2007
Waiting in Spin Alley
Tags: debates | election 2008 | media | politics | spin alley | waiting
Posted by acarvin at 7:15 PM
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June 29, 2007
Democratic Presidential Candidates Discuss the Digital Divide
Tags: Bill Richardson | Christopher Dodd | debates | Dennis Kucinich | digital divide | education technology | election 2008 | Mike Gravel | policy | politics
Posted by acarvin at 7:25 PM
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Asking the Candidates about the Digital Divide
While they didn't discuss the digital divide during the presidential debate as I had hoped, I managed to put some questions to four of the candidates in the spin room. Most of them didn't give me much more than a sound bite, but it was still interesting. Bill Richardson probably had the broadest perspective on the subject, while Chris Dodd and Dennis Kucinich focused on ubiquitous broadband and laptops for kids. Mike Gravel offered some terse comments on keeping the Internet free and putting computers in our classrooms.
I've posted an article about what they said on my PBS blog. I'll also put together a video of their comments soon. Hopefully, I'll be able to ask the Republican candidates about the digital divide at the next PBS debate, which will take place at the end of September. -andy
Tags: Bill Richardson | Christopher Dodd | Dennis Kucinich | digital divide | education technology | election 2008 | Mike Gravel | presidential debates
Posted by acarvin at 2:39 PM
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Dramatic Sharpton
Tags: Al Sharpton | dramatic chipmunk | election 2008 | evil eye | humor | politics | presidential debates | scowling
Posted by acarvin at 12:03 PM
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June 28, 2007
It's a Wrap
Posted by acarvin at 11:57 PM
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Hanging out with Mike Gravel
Even though he doesn't have a snowball's chance in hell of getting nominated, former senator Mike Gravel sure is entertaining. He spent much of the debate talking about the need to legalize drugs, and he kept at it in the spin room. Most of the reporters were talking with other candidates or their representatives, allowing for a more intimate conversation with Gravel and perhaps one or two other people at a time. Gravel lambasted the war on drugs, saying it's insane that a person can't get a prescription to buy cocaine. When asked if drugs should be taxed heavily, he disagreed, saying that he doesn't have to pay taxes for the painkillers he uses for his leg pain, so why should someone have to pay tax if they want to buy some drugs?
It sure is fascinating watching someone who has absolutely nothing to lose. :-) -andy
Tags: chutzpah | drugs | election 2008 | Mike Gravel | presidential debates
Posted by acarvin at 11:19 PM
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More Spin Than a Dreidel Confab
The post-debate spin room is in full swing right now. Four of the candidates who participated tonight - Dodd, Kucinich, Richardson and Gravel - are mingling with reporters, taking questions and posing for photograph. Biden has apparently left the campus, and I wouldn't be surprised if that were the case with Clinton, Obama and Edwards - we'll see. In their stead they have proxies taking questions for them - folks like Cornell West, Vernon Jordan and Reverend Al Sharpton.
I've managed to talk with all four candidates about Internet policy, mostly the digital divide. Senator Gravel spontaneously erupted in support of net neutrality, while Richardson focused more on creating math and science academies. I shot video of all of their responses, so I'll have to put together something with it later. -andy
Posted by acarvin at 11:14 PM
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Unvarnished: Scenes from the Media Center
Posted by acarvin at 10:15 PM
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Whither Maureen? Dayenu.
Still no sign of Maureen Dowd, but there's a glass of water by her chair that keeps getting lower and lower. How Elijah the Prophet. -andy
Posted by acarvin at 9:39 PM
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Settling into the Debate Routine
The candidates are now talking about education; Richardon's response seems to have resonated well in the media center and the chatrooms. It's gotten a lot quieter here; fewer media folks are chatting or making snarky remarks. Might also be because Obama is talking and everyone wants to hear what he has to say. -andy
Posted by acarvin at 9:32 PM
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Question 1: Race, Thank Yous, Drugs, Marriages
We're under way. The first question was about race and whether it's still a paramount issue. It took a few candidates before John Edwards decided to thank Howard University for hosting the event. Mike Gravel drew some confused looks in the media center when he talked about legalizing drugs. And Kucinich's response wasn't heard by anyone because everyone was asking who the redhead was? When they realized it was his wife, they were still confused. Next think you knew his time was up. -andy
Posted by acarvin at 9:09 PM
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You'll Get No Smokes from PBS, Thank You Very Much
One thing I've noticed while hanging out with the media posse here at the presidential debate is that the media center is healthier than the last time I attended a debate. Way back in 1992 I talked my way into a press pass for the third general election debate between Clinton, Bush Sr. and Perot at Michigan State University. The media center isn't that much different in terms of desk space, lots of coffee, fax machines, etc, but there's one thing that's missing.
Free cigarettes.
Now mind you, I don't smoke, nor did I smoke back in '92, but at that first debate, I couldn't help but notice the table of free swag from Philip Morris. You see, they were one of the main sponsors of that debate, and along the side of the media center room they set up a table with free stuff for the journalists. And the two things I remember the most were the packs of free cigarettes and the bowls full of Kraft carmel chews. The chews lasted the night; the cigarettes did not.
Thankfully, the good people at PBS are clearly looking out for our teeth and our lungs. At most, I'll go home somewhat caffeinated and full of protein (grilled chicken and salmon for dinner). And if anyone here wants to smoke, by God, they'll have to supply their own habit. -andy
Tags: candy | caramel | cigarettes | health | Kraft | media | Phillip Morris | politics | presidential debates | swag
Posted by acarvin at 8:52 PM
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Greetings from the Presidential Debate Media Center
Tags: election 2008 | Howard University | PBS | presidential debates
Posted by acarvin at 8:30 PM
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One Hour Til Debate Time
We're at 8pm now, and I'm hanging out with Robert Cox of the Media Bloggers Association and Anna Shoup of PBS Newshour. I just shot some video, which is slowly exporting, and I've stocked up on some ginger ale to get me through the debate, since it'll probably be hard to leave the room once things are rolling.
Anyway, back to video stuff.... -andy
Tags: election 2008 | Howard University | PBS | presidential debates
Posted by acarvin at 8:02 PM
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At the Debate's Media Center
It's 7pm and I just arrived at the media center for the presidential debate. Traffic on Georgia Ave was a mess, but you knew you were getting close when you started passing throngs of Chris Dodd supporters. Checking in was straightforward; the only glitch I had was having my car's driver side window getting jammed for a few minutes.
There are about 350-400 chairs set up along long rows of tables, each with a number of power splitters. Tables are set to the far left and right of the room, while the center is reserved as the "spin alley" - where the candidates or their proxies will all brag how great they did following the debate. The wi-fi is nice and face. Flat-panel screens that'll later show the debate are now showing Wolf Blitzer in that Situation Room of his.
I'm sitting about five rows back on the left; according to the placards in front of each chair, Maureen Dowd of the New York Times will be four seats to my right. This is gonna be sweet. -andy
Tags: election 2008 | Howard University | politics | presidential debates
Posted by acarvin at 7:00 PM
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Follow Tonight's Presidential Debate on Twitter
I've set up a Twitter account that's capturing the RSS feed set up by the Media Bloggers Association, which helped PBS credential bloggers for tonight's Democratic presidential debate at Howard University. If you're able to check the Web frequently, of course, the best thing to do is go straight to the Media Bloggers Association page that's aggregating all of us who are covering the debate. But if you'd rather receive updates via instant messaging or text messaging, the Twitter account is for you. Unfortunately, it probably won't capture every single one of our posts during the peak debate hours, since the tool I'm using to post on Twitter, Twitterfeed, limits the number of posts per hour. But along with blogging, I'll also try to post tweets from my own Twitter account from time to time.
Five and a quarter hours and counting.... This is gonna be fun.... -andy
Tags: instant messaging | Media Bloggers Association | politics | presidential debates | rss | SMS | text messaging | Twitter
Posted by acarvin at 3:39 PM
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How Seriously Will Tonight's Presidential Debate Tackle the Digital Divide?
It's just past 9am and I'm finding myself checking my watch a lot, hoping the hours of the day will pass quickly so I can head over to Howard University for tonight's Democratic presidential debate. The event is being organized by PBS, and my colleagues there have been kind enough to extend me a press pass so I can blog (and maybe even vlog) the event. For the first time ever, the debate will feature a panel of moderators made up entirely of people of color, and it'll focus on domestic issues that are of particular concern to minority voters.
As you can see on the debate website, they've already broken down the themes of the debate into eight categories, including healthcare, criminal justice, immigration and affordable neighborhoods. But I must say I was pleasantly surprised when I saw that one of the eight themes will be the digital divide. By my count, it's been seven years since a national political forum set out to address the digital divide. As a nation we've become complacent regarding the issue, which is understandable since around three-quarters of US households have Internet access, while minority groups have made significant strides in catching up.
But complacency, as is often the case, doesn't change the fact that there are still challenges that must be met. Because so many people are online today, Internet access is taken to be a given, whether by government, businesses, schools, etc. If you need to access to some kind of government service, you're expected to go online. Students are assumed to have access when completing homework and other assignments. Job applicants are assumed to have access and the requisite tech skills to back it up. When you meet someone who isn't online, the first assumption is that it must be by there choice, rather than the possibility that they can't afford it or lack the skills to use it effectively.
Meanwhile, as I've been arguing for a very long time now, the digital divide isn't just about measuring who has access to the Internet and who doesn't. It's about who has access and the skills necessary to use these tools to improve quality of life for their families and communities. Included in this is the ability for people to become more civically engaged and have more of a voice within local and national decisionmaking. None of you need to hear me repeat the same lecture on how social media tools like blogging and YouTube are giving individual the power to participate in civic discourse in ways that were not previously possible. (Remember, Time Magazine gave us all that Person of the Year award.) Thankfully, research from groups like the Pew Internet Project is beginning to suggest that user-generated content is becoming more democratized. But the conventional wisdom would still suggest that Web 2.0 is largely a place for more affluent, better educated and generally white people.
We need to do a better job of bringing social media tools and skills to people that'll have been disenfranchised, just as we work on strategies to bridge the divide in the more traditional sense. It's a multi-stakeholder challenge, involving the private sector, local and national government, educational instutions, religious institutions and civil society. How will the candidates tackle these issues if they were to become president? So far I've heard close to nothing from any of them. I'm hoping that'll change tonight. -andy
Tags: civic engagement | debates | digital divide | Howard University | PBS | policy | politics | social media | Web 2.0
Posted by acarvin at 9:27 AM
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June 22, 2007
Ask a Presidential Candidate
If you had a chance to put a question to Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama or any of the other Democratic presidential candidates, what would you ask them? If something comes to mind, please tell my NPR colleague Michel Martin. She's one of the moderators at next week's Democratic presidential debate at Howard University on June 28th. I suggested to her that she ask the public for potential questions on her blog and she took up the challenge:
Yours truly will be one of the questioners at the PBS-sponsored presidential debate next week at Howard University.We want your questions. Do you have one...or three?
We are particularly interested in key domestic and international concerns that have NOT been showcased in the other debates.
What's on your mind? We'll be asking every day from now until next THURSDAY, June 28.
So if you've got a potential question for the candidates, please post it on Michel's blog. (You're welcome to post it on my blog as well, but be sure to post it on hers as well, since I can't guarantee she'll read it here.)
Speaking of next week's debate, I'll be blogging from the event, thanks to my colleagues at PBS, who are sponsoring the debate. PBS is now working with the Media Bloggers Association to credential bloggers who want to cover the event. I'll probably be in the media center with everyone else, but hopefully I can snag some time with some of the candidates or their proxies in the post-debate chaos of the spin room. This will be my second presidential debate - I covered the last of the three general election debates that took place between Bill Clinton, Bush Sr. and Ross Perot in 1992. I'm really looking forward to the debate, so please check out the blog on the evening of Thursday, June 28th to get the skinny on what's taking place there. -andy
Tags: Barack Obama | blogging | credentials | election 2008 | Hillary Clinton | Howard University | Media Bloggers Association | PBS | presidential debate
Posted by acarvin at 11:39 AM
