On McCain’s Night, Divided Attention

Even on the night that he accepted the Republican nomination for President, John McCain shared the spotlight with the phenom of the Republican convention, vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin.

A check of the five bellwethers of the Internet we are monitoring since the conventions began reveals almost as much Friday morning buzz about the No. 2 figure on the ticket as there was about the man atop it.  

Our Internet indicators reflected the same broad trend at both conventions. The standard bearers from both parties were often overshadowed by other key players. In the case of the Democrats, they were Hillary and Bill Clinton, whose level of enthusiasm for Barack Obama became a key issue. At the GOP gathering, it was Palin, the virtually unknown Alaska Governor, who has emerged as the lightning rod of the convention.

To get a sense of the online buzz during the conventions, PEJ is monitoring five online destinations each morning at 9 a.m. The sample includes the top political headline on the Drudge Report, top political headline on the Huffington Post, the political story most linked to by bloggers in the previous 48 hours, according to the blog aggregating site Technorati, the most emailed political story on Yahoo! News, and the most viewed political video on YouTube.

The lead headline on Friday morning’s Drudge Report—“Eight Week Battle”—looked beyond the Republican convention to the sprint toward Election Day. The liberal Huffington Post took a somewhat mocking view of McCain’s speech, in which he pledged to bring reform to Washington, with the headline, “Me Too: I Want Change...”

The item most emailed from Yahoo! News, for the second day in a row, was an Associated Press story fact-checking remarks made by convention speakers. Last night, it focused on the blurring of some facts by McCain and other Thursday night luminaries.

Then it was Palin’s turn again. The most-linked-to story by bloggers monitored on Technorati was a New York Times article headlined “Palin's Start in Alaska: Not Politics As Usual.” It reported that Palin introduced a “local lesson in wedge politics” in her bid for mayor of Wasilla. That marked the second day in a row that the most-linked-to story made the same point—Thursday it was a Time.com piece concluding that Palin brought a polarizing element to Wasilla politics.

And finally, Palin dominated the most viewed YouTube videos Friday. Excerpts of her Wednesday speech totaled more than 1.5 million views. The next highest video, at about 1.2 million, was the now famous MSNBC “hot mic” interview in which Republican analysts Peggy Noonan and Mike Murphy were accidentally overheard disparaging the choice of Palin as VP.

Read Buzz Detector Republicans Day 1
Read Buzz Detector Republicans Day 2
Read Buzz Detector Republicans Day 3

Mark Jurkowitz of PEJ