Using Technology to Compare Campaigns Side by Side

A couple of days ago, one of the folks behind a new site called Politickr wrote in to let me know a bit more about what they’re up to. Politickr turns out to be one of the few political sites I’ve seen that’s really using technology in a creative way to illuminate some part of the ’08 campaign — they’re using RSS feeds and semantic analysis to show the presidential candidates’ recent blog posts side-by-side and to map the ideas on which each blog is focusing.

Glancing at the site today, for instance, we can see that Brownback’s taking a quick smack at Romney (nyah nyah, you’re not as conservative as me), Rudy’s touting his supply-side credentials, Obama’s talking about “substance” and Biden wouldn’t mind if we voted for him. It’s a quite easy way to see each campaign’s theme of the day (Kucinich’s seems to be, “look at me! I use Flickr!”) and to compare and contrast communications strategies.

My favorite part of Politickr is the visual representation of what the campaign blogs are covering — click on the tag clouds link and you’ll get a visual/conceptual map of each site’s recent topics. It’s a classic concept cloud approach, with more-represented subjects being shown in a larger and heavier font, and it makes it super-easy to see each site’s emphasis. For instance, “Iraq” tends to loom large on the Dem sites but is rather missing from on the Repub side. Some terms are a bit obscure (what is “myleftnutmeg” and why does Chris Dodd care about it?), but you can click on each to see a recent post in which it appears (ah, it’s the name of a blog on which he guest-posted). Very cool concept, nicely done — one of the few truly innovative applications of technology to politics I’ve seen in a while.

– cpd