Mapping Cyberscapes of the 2012 Republican Presidential Primary

They've given us gems like "I like being able to fire people", suggesting that we replace professional janitors with dozens of children from working-class homes in order to cut costs. And a bunch of other crazy inventive stuff. In an indirect way, they've also given us new vocabulary words, parodies and re-interpretations. They've also provided the raw material necessary for a range of user-generated, web 2.0, prosumptive behavior. So even though you may be a little bit frightened, you should also thank them -- albeit not necessarily with your vote.

But with the Republican presidential primaries already well underway (and today being the Florida primary), we thought it a good time to dig a bit deeper than the superficial soundbites coming from the candidates. So in this post we're understanding the geography of these candidates via pythagoric numerology and haruspicy. Ha! Just kidding, we will be looking at the distribution of geotagged online content like always. After all that's the whole point of the blog and something we've done previously for European political leaders, as well as the 2010 election in the UK and the 2008 US Presidential election. Just sometimes we dream about a change....

So what are the geographies of the 2012 GOP primary like? Is it possible for these cyberscapes to help us predict election outcomes? Are they total hogwash? Just pretty colors?
Mapping references to each of the original eight GOP contenders, one sees that the two current front runners for the nomination, Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich, actually have very few references relative to the other candidates. It seems evident then that these cyberscapes show a lesser degree of differentiation between candidates than is evident in the primary results thusfar.

One of the clearest patterns is the plethora of references to Rick Perry across his home state and the very few outside of Texas. Given Texas' minimal influence on the nomination process, it's likely that he now wishes he was from Iowa. There is a similar, albeit much smaller, pocket of references to Jon Huntsman in his home of Salt Lake City, while Minnesota has a cluster of references to US Representative Michele Bachmann.

But most evident is the vast swath of territory, with no real conformity to political borders, that is dominated by references to Ron Paul. Libertarians are everywhere! It's nice that the federally funded national highway system is there to help speed their movement!

Even removing the candidates that have now dropped out of the race, Ron Paul's dominance in the cyberscape of the Republican primary field is evident. While Paul's prevalence in geocoded references isn't reflected in the polling numbers in the real election, it isn't entirely surprising. As we saw over two years ago with Barack Obama's disproportionate prominence in Google Maps content, Ron Paul's prominence online is certainly a reflection of his campaign's use of the internet as a primary organizing tool.

But since the electoral system in the US is really so dependent upon what happens at the state-level we thought it worthwhile to stray from our usual method of measuring cyberscapes on a more flexible, point-by-point basis and instead aggregate references on a state-by-state basis [1].
It doesn't seem, however, to make much of a difference in the relative visibility of the different candidates. Ron Paul's seeming dominance over the virtual landscape remains a fact, while Mitt Romney wins only his home state of Massachusetts as well as Utah and Alabama and Gingrich winning just his home state of Georgia. Santorum's "win" in Oregon is primarily due to his "Google problem", with numerous references to the alternative meaning in Eugene [2].

So, if one were to use this map as a prediction of victories in GOP primaries, Ron Paul would easily be the next Republican presidential candidate. Indeed, according to references alone, Ron Paul would have won each of the three primaries that have already taken place (of which he actually won zero).

This aptly highlights the difference between online activism and offline activism. Not that we really needed a reminder after all the protest events of last year. Moreover it will be some time (thank goodness!) before Google Maps can be used to predict presidential elections. Although we're sure that someone is developing an app as we speak.

But one thing is clear, based on these maps we feel that there despite his love of conspiracy theories about the New World Order, Ron Paul might actually be the one controlling the internet.

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[1] States shaded grey are representative of no clear "winner" in the number of geocoded references to the candidates. Either there were no references to the candidates' names or at least two candidates were tied for the greatest number of references -- essentially the same reasoning as the many points with no dots on the other maps above.
[2] Which brings up the role of Google and code in how places are represented online.

Mapping the Tea Party Movement Online

Since Sarah Palin was recently talking about our blog on cable news shows, we decided it was only fair to map out her so-called tea-party movement.



It is interesting that the West Coast and the northeast of the country have some of the highest relative and total hits for the tea party. Perhaps this refudiates the claim that these are less pro-America parts of the nation. Or, depending upon your point of view, it may confirm that the coasts are out to destroy the country.

Also the patterns we see in the above slice of cyberscape, represented by data drawn from Google Maps, is matched by another slice of cyberscape drawn from Twitter. A presentation by Pete Skomoroch, Kevin Weil, and Sean Gorman shows the distribution of tweets with the term tea party. It shows Lady Gaga, as well, if you're curious (check out slide 68).


We should also point out that just because you can't see Russia on these maps is no reason to misunderestimate them. There's also a distinct possibility that we're missing out on a whole slew of geotagged data due to the misspelling of fairly simple words.

Liberal, conservative and the Kansas surprise

Liberal or conservative?

To any critical thinker, such a question should seem reductionist. And, well, it is. But since it's incredibly hard (nee impossible!) to map an entire world worth of possibilities, we should just embrace the nature of the map and all of its reductionist tendencies and get on with it.

When comparing and visualizing virtual references to "conservative" and "liberal" in the Google Maps database, one ends up with a map like the one seen above. But what does it mean? What do "conservative" and "liberal" even mean?

The short answer is, well, a lot of things. For one, contrasting these terms is extremely problematic because it excludes such a wide range of alternative political views that lie either between or outside of this dyad. Second, the question of locality is important, as the political meanings of liberal and conservative are often subject to place-specific interpretations, not to mention the projection of personal preference. Indeed, it could be easily argued that many 'conservatives' in the western world actually adhere to liberal political philosophy, broadly writ. And we don't even need to start with the debate that what most Americans call liberal would be considered right-of-center in many parts of the world.

Even assigning the colors red or blue to each term is problematic, as each color is interpreted differently in different countries. For instance, in the USA, red is associated with the conservative Republican party while blue is the color of the more liberal Democratic party. In the UK, however, red is the color of the left-of-center Labour party and blue the color of the Conservative party. And don't forget the reason "red" is also a noun.

The contrast between the U.S. and Europe is striking. With the exception of the UK and Italy, Europe contains many more references to liberal than conservative in its geoweb. Standard linguistic and spellings issues apply for non-English speaking countries but nevertheless the differences are intriguing and correspond to expectations, i.e., on the whole Europe has a more "liberal" political bent the U.S.

What is unexpected is the big blog of "liberal" references right in the middle of the U.S. Taking a close look, this cluster conforms perfectly the the border of the state of Kansas, a state known for its conservative shift over the past decades. Color us confused. We're hard pressed to come up with a solid hypothesis as to what's going on here so we'll suggest a couple more off the wall ones.

• Kansas is the liberal equivalent to Dick Cheney's "secure location";
• In Kansas slang, political terms are used interchangably with the name of drinks and other bar food, e.g., Hey Bartender, give me a glass of liberal (beer) with a Jacobite (whiskey) chaser and a bowl of socio-anarchism (peanuts);
  
• Kansas just happens to have a particularly fervent desire to use the word liberal in as derogatory a way as possible in Google Maps;
  
• There is a big conspiracy to virtually colonize the political cyberscape of Kansas.
  

Where's Glenn Beck with all of his ridiculous charts when you actually need him?