I normally hate big data wankery, but I find this shit fascinating: the share of google searches for a GOP candidate in NH on election day closely mirrored that candidate’s share of the vote.
Strangely enough, Jeb is doing very (second place to Trump — EDIT: hopefully this new link is not paywalled) in google searches in South Carolina right now.
dr. bloor
They’re checking to see if his mom is running yet.
boatboy_srq
@dr. bloor: Weren’t they Googling to see if he is related to Shrub?
boatboy_srq
Interesting that in NH, Trump and Cruz drew a lower percentage of votes than the search numbers, while HEB?, Christie and Rubio drew a higher percentage. Polarizing figures and all that, I guess…
SFAW
Not so strange: now that Rocky the Racist (a/k/a Right to Rant a/k/a Reich to Rise) has been banned from here, they have to get their money’s worth from him somehow — might as well be doing Google searches, asking things like “Is Jeb Bush related to George W. Bush?” and “Is Jeb! Bush REALLY the smarter brother?” and “Quien es mas macho — Barbara Bush o Jeb!/Heb! Bush?”
ETA: boatboy beat me by that much (said while holding thumb and index finger approximately one quarter inch apart).
cat
Paywalled. So we can’t tell if they checked their hypothesis against Iowa and the Democratic primaries.
Betty Cracker
It would be awesome if Jeb comes in second in South Carolina. It would knock Rubio off his media-darling-in-waiting perch and contribute to an even wider schism between Establi-cons and the Trumpenproletariat. Sadly, I do not think this will come to pass, but I will continue to root for chaos.
Amir Khalid
Thy link doth run into a paywall.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
or they’re getting ready to put in some spring shrubbery
@Betty Cracker: I think third place would be an upset for Jeb:( at this point, but it would keep the “establishment” demolition derby bumping into each other trying to catch up to Trump
Matt McIrvin
I’m still looking in vain for the massive South Carolina Rubio-mentum that that recent Politico article was crowing about. There are a couple of polls from ARG that show Ted Cruz doing anomalously poorly so Rubio is in second place, but in those polls, it’s Kasich who does better than usual. The numbers for Kasich are all over the place.
Germy
Is Obama playing chess when he tells reporters “No way Trump will be president” knowing full well the GOP voters hate him (worst prez ever!) and will turn out in droves in response to win Trump the nomination? Which is what HRC wants?
In this video, Grandmaster Maurice Ashley plays chess with a trash talking guy in Washington Square Park who never saw it coming.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5vnpOp0U_g
Betty Cracker
@Matt McIrvin: The media is trying to make Rubio happen through sheer force of will. And if they succeed, they will fawn all over Rubio as the fresh new face against that tiresome, wonky old hag / curmudgeon Clinton / Sanders. They’ll cite Rubio’s bad performance in the NH debate in the run-up to a general election debate, and when the Democrat predictably demolishes the GOP vaporware entity, they’ll declare a Rubio victory because he “exceeded expectations.” We’ve seen this movie before. It ends badly.
WaterGirl
@Germy: I think obama is sincere in his comments about trump. I think he really has faith in the american people. I also believe that he is well aware that if you compliment or credit people with good sense or good behavior then they are more apt to behave in that fashion.
NonyNony
@Germy:
Nope. I think Obama just tells the truth as he sees it. I don’t think he strategically tells the truth to try to get a certain outcome out of the nutbars reacting to his comments – I think he just answers the questions that get thrown out there by the press. He was asked about the Republican field and he gave his opinion on it.
(He was asked about the Democratic field too and I don’t think he answered that one strategically either, except to not answer the question about his preference and turn it around to “all of the Republicans are horrible.” Which is the sitting President’s job during an election year that he’s not running in, to be honest.)
Germy
@WaterGirl:
I agree, but these are republicans we’re talking about. He also thought he’d usher in an era of bipartisanship in 2008 by being a sensible moderate, and they call him a marxist commie kenyan usurper.
J R in WV
This is a strange corelation any way you think about it.
I’m not sure it means anything… really means anything.
HEY – the comment numbers are back! Now they’re italic. Were they italic before?
I just hope the back button starts taking us back to the comment we were at before, so we can refer to an earlier comment while writing a response to it. Sometimes the trail to find a proper name instead of he nameless pronoun is several comments long.
Keep up the good work, all you behind the scenes guys~!
Germy
In the video I linked to of the Grandmaster playing the Washington Square Park hustler, the hustler tries to cheat by moving the Grandmaster’s pieces and then shouting “I didn’t move anything! I didn’t touch your piece!”
So it was really a match between a chess player and a calvinball pro.
Just Some Fuckhead
Presumably Trump and Cruz googlers didn’t like what they found and supported Bush and Christie or stayed home.
:)
Germy
I have seen many RW internet commenters make their points (and “win” their arguments) by yelling “Just google it!”
I’ve never understood their logic. I mean, you can google “left-handed candy striped elephant tuxedo” and probably get a million links. (I haven’t tried it)
Also, when they say “google it!” they’re basically seeing links to their favorite RW fever swamps.
NonyNony
@Germy:
Sounds like you get their logic to me. Epistemic closure is a helluva drug.
amk
guess all kindsa bs analysis gets done in intertoobs.
Germy
@J R in WV:
They’ve always been italic and they’ve always been here, at the Overlook Hotel Balloon-Juice Blog.
This is a minor nit for me to pick, but why have the word “Home” up on top next to the logo? Most places, if you click on the logo itself, it takes you to the home page.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@Betty Cracker: Not only that but they’re doing the same thing, again, to George W. I saw about 5 minutes of some pundit fawning over his political skills in MSNBC on Monday after the news broke that he was going to campaign for JEB? in SC. They still think W’s the greatest. So now they have a new dim, lazy GOP pretty boy to fawn over and sell to the public (Rubio)…because that worked out so well the last time. The press is a sucker for dim, lazy GOPers. I don’t know why, but they are.
amk
@Betty Cracker:
Isn’t dumbya3 aka gunslinger running dead last with the head case guy in SC per ppp?
Gin & Tonic
@Germy: They were absent last night.
MattF
The correlation in the two graphs is due to voters who have already decided who they are going to vote for checking out what that person actually says.
Bobby Thomson
@SFAW: why bother banning RtR? He was a laughably incompetent troll.
Germy
@Gin & Tonic: I know, I tried (and failed) to make a stupid, spooky “The Shining” joke.
I’ll just get my hat and coat and go now.
Gin & Tonic
There’s been some discussion here about Trump’s WTC 9/11 comments, with suggestions that he seems to be taking that one aspect especially personally for some reason. Apparently, at the SC debate (which, despite everyone’s comments about what good theater it was, I didn’t watch) he said that he lost “hundreds of friends.” That would be somewhere in the area of 10% of the total death toll. Unfortunately, there seems to be no evidence whatsoever that that is true.
Anoniminous
The relationship between the number of Google searches and vote percentage is happenstance. Stay after class, find a blackboard, and write 100 times: Correlation is not Causation.
WereBear
Reminds them of themselves, no doubt.
WarMunchkin
So, what’s the Senate like for us? I’ve got:
Kelly Ayotte versus Maggie Hassan
Russ Feingold versus Ron Johnson (really, nobody else besides Russ in WI?)
Pat Toomey versus Nameless Democratic Challenger (please, let’s not let Toomey win this)
Marco Rubio versus Patrick Murphy (probable)
Anyone I’m forgetting?
MattF
@Anoniminous: Well, one can overdo that particular motto. Correlation accompanies causation. The (usually) missing link is a model. If you have a model, you can make inferences from the model and then correlation will confirm the inferences to some level.
Amir Khalid
@Germy:
I just tried googling “left-handed candy striped elephant tuxedo” and got 38,400 links, all of them seemingly irrelevant.
NotMax
@Gin & Tonic
Goes right along with his “thousands of cheering Muslims in New Jersey” bushwa.
Munchausen campaigning.
NobodySpecial
I wonder how much of the Jeb searches were driven by the news that JebBush.com redirects to Trump’s website, and people testing it to see.
D58826
We can’t fill the pot holes or make sure that every child has 3 meals a day or deliver clean affordable water to Flint but the Chinese:
From Juan Cole.
Wonder what we are doing wrong.
NotMax
@WarMunchkin
Rubio not running for re-election to Senate, AFAIK.
Anoniminous
PPP has a Poll of Polls report out about the early March primaries and it is good news for Clinton:
She is on schedule to have the nomination wrapped-up by the end March.
NonyNony
@WarMunchkin:
Ted Strickland vs. Rob Portman
And not Marco Rubio vs. Patrick Murphy. Rubio isn’t running for the Senate again – he said he wasn’t going to try to run for President and Senate at the same time. Unlike fellow Senator Rand Paul, Rubio is all in on the Presidential race (plus I don’t think he likes being a Senator. I’m not sure why he thinks he’d like being President anymore than he has being a Senator though).
Joel
If you needed evidence that Scalia was crooked, well there you have it.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Gin & Tonic: Here’s an interview he gave with a German station on 9/13/2001. He said he had properties in the area that were affected. It’s amazing how level-headed he sounds there. It makes one wonder if he has some sort of dementia now… :-/
Cheers,
Scott.
Roger Moore
@Germy:
I never thought the slow-mo instant replay would be that helpful in chess. Shows what I know.
Anoniminous
@MattF:
Maybe. In non-linear systems or systems “governed” (sic) by Power Laws statistical correlation is beside the point. As Noam Chomsky said, in an allied context, “you can get a number if you wish but it doesn’t mean anything.”
I fully agree about the importance of Models.
Ohio Mom
@Anoniminous: I hope Bernie has a graceful exit.
Mike in NC
People observed yesterday that Dubya showed up in SC to campaign for his moron brother while looking like ten pounds of shit in a five pound bag. Wife also mentioned that his hair was falling out. All good to me. Hopefully he’ll drive down JEBzzz numbers a little bit more in the primary.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Mike in NC: It was rich of the guy who made up juvenile names for his staff, reporters, etc. (“turdblossom”) to lecture candidates about being civil, also too.
Cheers,
Scott.
p.a.
Have the Bushites claimed, a la their 2000 McClain smear, that Trump sired a mixed race child? In the eyes of SC conservatives, is Ivanka considered to be of mixed ‘race’?
Sherparick
Halperin and his crew certainly yearn to see the Marcobot to rise from the ashes and beat the Trumpenator. It is very clear if he finishes in 3rd place in South Carolina, he will be deemed the winner. https://twitter.com/MarkHalperin?ref_src=twsrc^tfw
Halperin needs to be informed that he is MSM.
And more in our Failed Media Experiment of the day, Driftglass documents the degradation of MSNBC into the Trump now, Trump tomorrow, and Trump all the time network sponsored by his two BFF, Squint and Meat Puppet. Rachel, Chris Hayes, Melissa Harris-Perry, and Steve Benen on Maddow Blog are the only remnants of what was the so called liberal voice in MSM.
gene108
@p.a.:
Wouldn’t matter. Ivanka’s good looking. They’d figure Trump did something right in fathering a beauty.
Anoniminous
@Ohio Mom:
It depends on what he is trying to do. If, as he has often claimed, he is in it for the long haul and to spark a Left wing grassroots movement for change winning the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination is beside the point. It would be nice but not necessary. Even after Clinton has obviously won the nomination he could continue roaming the countryside drumming up enthusiasm for Congressional and State wide elections and as an organizational speaking tour.
Matt McIrvin
@Betty Cracker: It worked for George W. Bush.
Benw
Those charts only tell part of the story. Google search data predicts ‘free pr0n’ will win the next round of primaries in a landslide.
Jay C
@D58826:
Well, the reason why it hasn’t been done before is most likely because the rail links to that part of world probably didn’t exist until relatively recently. Though, even given the distances, 14 days from “China” (where?) to Teheran isn’t exactly HIgh Speed Rail. But then again,presumably any freight sent on that route is on a “no rush” schedule. And at least it got there.
The Chinese (Government), AFAICR, makes sure that any “development” includes adequate railroad connections: no surprise that they probably financed the trackage to Central Asia themselves. Though what we are “doing wrong” mainly relates to passenger transport: the rail freight system in the US is actually fairly efficient (as best I know).
GregB
Seriously W does look like he crawled out of bed st 2:00 pm and was hustled off to a political event.
By the way did anyone else notice that W’s paintings of world leaders are always the first photo that comes up on a Google search? He is so unoriginal that he can’t even take the effort to find a non generic shot of his subjects.
Gin & Tonic
@Jay C:
Very efficient, actually.
D58826
@Jay C: two points 1/. they used existing rail links. 2. there are plans to build a truly high speed link in the near future to Iran and to Europe. A 21st century silk road.
NotMax
@Jay C
Would take it from the story that Chinese rail lines (at least major ones leading to roadbed outside the country) are no longer narrow gauge.
Gin & Tonic
@NotMax: They change gauge at the Iranian border.
Grumpy Code Monkey
Fascinating. So I’m looking at Clinton vs. Sanders vs. Trump over the last week in SC. If you pick Web searches in “all categories”, then Trump trends highest, followed by Sanders, followed by Clinton. If you change the category from “all” to “News”, then it flips completely.
Not quite sure what this means.
SFAW
@Bobby Thomson:
I believe it was his racism (or racist comments) that got him banned, not his trolling.
His trolling just got him mocked. His racism was a different story.
yellowdog
@WarMunchkin: We have an open race in Maryland (Mikulski retiring) but if a Republican wins the seat it is really all over for the Democratic Party. The Dem will probably be Van Hollen who represents a district just north of DC (MD-8). I don’t even know who is playing on the GOP side.
J R in WV
@D58826:
Perhaps China isn’t worrying about clean water for 98% of their population? Not worried about child welfare for 95% of their population? etc, etc?
Plus all those countries have no real highway system, so no pothole problem, and all of the maintenance effort supports their only transport system, the railroad.
When we visited France, most little villages had RR service, and light rail ran internal to the big cities. There were operational canals crossing valleys up in the air, no longer used commercially, but perfectly functional.
We rode on a second tier train from Toulouse (center of the European aerospace industry) to Paris. When we complemented the conductor on his train, he rolled his eyes and said “This?” as in, you should ride a really good train sometime. But his second tier train was at least as good as Amtrak, which I also have enjoyed.
So this China rail story doesn’t impress me so much.
Bobby Thomson
@D58826: not having a contiguous border with any of those countries?
Bobby Thomson
@D58826: using existing rail links in a lot other countries means what exactly? Failing to see how this is impressive.
Aleta
@D58826: Too bad we tore up so much existing rail track, sold off our comfortable rr cars to Europe and Japan, and (I’ve heard) stopped adequate funding for railroads in favor of fast-building the interstates.
J R in WV
I think the supreme court justice with a history of corruption, kinda, is Justice Clarence Thomas, as he declined to acknowledge his wife’s 6-figure annual salary. This led to a complaint against the Justice in the Missouri Supreme Court:
Virginia Thomas works at the Heritage Foundation, a well know and totally non-partisian ( /snark ) political group… maybe that’s why Clarence didn’t report that income?
Justice Thomas also worked as a corporate lawyer for Monsanto, and has declined to recuse himself when hearing cases involving Monsanto. He has, coincidently, ruled in favor of Monsanto in every case of theirs he has heard from the bench.
Another of the right-wing justices voted on the Bush-Gore case while his offspring was working for Bush, no harm there!
So, no, not all that squeaky clean, are they?
I’ve never heard any similar criticism of any of the less political (democratically appointed) justices.
I’m resting up between stretches of hard work on the shower… when I get to panting I have to stop and catch my breath. I live at 700 odd feet above sea level, and right now I’m working hard at 5500 feet, so a little sparse on the oxygen compared to what my system is used to. But it’s good for me to get this kind of exercise! Right!
Aleta
@J R in WV: Why are you putting in a shower at 5500 feet ? Relatives in the Rockies?
J R in WV
@Aleta:
Nearly so!
We have built a small home for winter use in AE Arizona. We started the project before AZ went crazy politically is all I can say about that. The southern tier of the state is more stable politically than the rest of the state, sometimes called Baja Arizona.
But our location is in the foothills of the Dragoon Mountains, a National Forest unit that includes Cochise Stronghold, and we have a 50 mile view out over the valley, which is more like 4200-4400 feet. I do have a cousin nearby, we found the knoll while visiting her, and went back home to the rest of that winter, filled with sleet, freezing rain and heavy snow.
I’ve been working on it each winter except the last one for 6 or 7 years now. It’s a comfortable camp already, but needs some finish work, trim on doors and windows, tile in the shower are the two big jobs. Last year I had shoulders replaced, so I’m going slow from now on.
Metal roof, thick Portland-based stucco exterior, not much brush near the house, so it’s somewhat fire proof, and looks rustically proper for the SouthWest.
MCA1
@Anoniminous: I’d say effectively done by two weeks from yesterday, and conclusively “over” by the 15th. Even with another 5-7 points of Bernie gains between now and then, she’s looking at decisive 3/1 wins in TX, GA, VA, TN, AL and AR, a loss in OK, and if we’re generous to Bernie since they’re whiter and/or more liberal states (but no polling in this latest from PPP) narrow losses in CO and MN, combined with clear Sanders wins in MA and VT. That would give Clinton a large delegate lead and an air of inevitability, and she’d probably be set up to roll on the 15th, too, with NC (where she currently leads by 17), IL (birth state, Obama’s home state, large AA population), FL, OH and MO, none of which are clearly particularly Bernie-friendly.
Obviously, things can tighten in the next couple weeks, but the disadvantage for Sanders is he can’t just stump the hell out of each of the Super Tuesday states. He can cut into Clinton’s leads in some of them, but there are just too many states to put the kind of focus on each of them he could/can for IA, NH, NV and SC. Every day he’s out trying to cut into Clinton’s lead in South Carolina, he’s not cutting into her 23 point lead in Texas, which has 4.5x the number of delegates.
Gravenstone
@WarMunchkin: Russ is currently kicking Johnson’s ass. Expect that to continue because WI voters aren’t that enamored of his performance, regardless of how batshit wingnutty he’s been. And Rubio is not defending his seat. So that’s two good pick up chances.
J R in WV
@MCA1:
I agree with this delegate/vote counting analysis.
I don’t think Sanders has any chance of beating Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination, and I don’t think randomly selected crazy Republican can beat her in the General.
If wishes were horses, we’d all be riding… I’m sure hoping she wins!
I think the alternatives are apocalyptic novels waiting to be written.
MCA1
@Gravenstone: Add Kirk to the list of “Dems should win this if they’re serious about re-taking the Senate.” He’s facing Tammy Duckworth, a generally D-friendly state landscape and various other headwinds.
Looks to this observer like the easiest route to 50 is to pick off Johnson, Kirk, Rubio’s vacated seat and then one of Toomey, Ayotte or Portman. Might be easier to get to 51 through the VP than by expecting to steal 5 seats. Then again, if it’s Trump on the R side and he manages to turn off enough normally Republican voters, he could have the sort of negative coattails that lead to a D sweep of the contested Senate seats and a 52-48 majority. Then we could spend at least another 2 years wondering why Dems didn’t nuke the filibuster more than they did when they had the chance.
SFAW
@MCA1:
Seems unlikely Portman will lose, although she may be too distracted from “Thor 3 – The Thorening” to run a strong campaign.
I would think Kirk, Johnson (a/k/a Louie Gohmert with more hair), Ayotte, and Toomey stand a decent chance of losing.
Don’t know enough about Florida, but maybe the Dems will snatch defeat from the jaws of victory by nominating Charlie Crist.
Matt McIrvin
The Nevada caucus situation is still way underpolled. On the D side, there are now two polls showing Clinton and Sanders in a dead heat, but they’re the only polls since December, and the massive motion in between was apparently missed entirely.
Matt McIrvin
@MCA1: Sanders is still gaining on Clinton in national primary polls, though, and if you extrapolate the trends linearly he could be leading in popular support by March or April. If Clinton wallops him in the delegate count while he’s clearly favored by Democratic voters nationally, I could see that leading to hurt feelings at convention time and disaster in the fall.