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Kathy Quirk
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UWM professor’s campaign blog attracts national attention

Thomas Holbrook

A University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee professor’s blog on the presidential campaign is being quoted in top media and political circles.

Thomas Holbrook, Wilder Crane Professor of Government, began blogging in February to share his own conclusions about the primaries, based on data and information from exit polls. Last Thursday (Aug. 21), his blog – election08data.blogspot.com/ – was cited by Karl Rove in an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal and by Newsweek’s campaign blog. He also did a four-minute segment on a national Fox morning news program the previous morning.

Holbrook started the blog as a way of sharing his data-based research on politics and political campaigns. He’d just done a presentation to the Women’s Division of the Milwaukee Jewish Federation, he says, and realized “I had all of this interesting stuff so I thought, why not put it out in public to show what’s going on?”

His target audience was teachers and students in the social and political sciences. “I’ve had e-mail messages from people who teach political science and use it as a resource for students.”

Traffic to the blog varies with what’s in the campaign news, how much attention people are paying to the campaign and who’s linking to his blog. “Sometimes I post things and nobody seems to notice,” he says. Other times, something he writes about attracts the attention of the national media or larger, influential political blogs, and the numbers skyrocket. On Thursday, a particularly heavy-traffic day, he’d had about 275 unique visitors to the blog by midday.

Holbrook’s blog on the likely size of the post-convention “bump” (in the polls) for McCain and Obama attracted a lot of national attention. Holbrook’s contention, based on data from previous campaigns, is that the first convention held has a bigger impact on the polls. Another factor, he adds, is the candidate’s standing in the polls before the convention, especially relative to where he was expected to be.

Obama is slightly ahead in the polls, but not as much as might have been expected, given the high levels of dissatisfaction with the direction of the country, Holbrook says. Based on past patterns, the convention may correct that and provide Obama with a pretty substantial post-convention jump in poll numbers, according to Holbrook. Of course, he adds, those post-convention bumps can dissipate, and the candidate with the biggest “bump” doesn’t always win – again based on historical patterns.

Sometimes people respond to his blog because they agree with it; other times because they disagree. “During the Democratic primaries, I heard from both Obama and Hilary supporters who begged to differ with things I’d written.”