Arizona’s Problem – It Isn’t Going Away

We’ve been watching Arizona closely. Initially, it looked like the backlash to SB 1070 was dissippating. In fact, we even said so. However, just as Arizona’s sentiment was starting to recover, HB 2281 was passed making several changes to the state’s educational system that detractors say, are prejudicial and ban ethnic studies. The effect? A double dip. Sure enough, Arizona’s perception reversed its comeback and dropped into negative territory.

However, that’s not what is most concerning. What is most concerning that Arizona is still persistently in negative territory and it we are now entering the 6th week since the passage of SB 1070 and the 4th week after HB 2281. We even have the biggest ongoing environmental crisis in a generation going on in the Gulf and nothing beats a backlash than another crisis taking the spotlight. Given all of that, the backlash is still present. To such an extent that I wouldn’t call it a backlash anymore. It is more of a persistent PR crisis for Arizona and something that might turn into a stigma. Internally at Alchemy our stance was that they needed to go into the Memorial Day weekend in positive territory. Didn’t happen. Even more worrisome is that the negative chatter volumes haven’t dissipated that much.

Note the two humps. Each correspond with polls showing that the majority of American’s support Arizona’s recent laws. However, in both instances, the bounce only lasted for two days.

Again, look at the chatter levels last week – the intro week to a 3 day weekend. While lower than the previous week they aren’t dissipating as America’s attention is turned to the Gulf Coast. This is an ominous sign for Arizona. I can’t imagine the folks at the Arizona Department of Tourism can be pleased.

American Idol – What Went Wrong?

We were riding an unbeaten streak here at Alchemy. Based on a request that came in from a prospect we decided to take a look at the American Idol match-up. Rarely, do we ever see a model that was so strongly in favor of one party – in this case Bowersox. From that model we felt very confident that barring a mistake in the next to final episode, Bowersox would be crowned the victor. Judging from media coverage, Bowersox had a strong performance the night before the final. In fact, the SoV measure in between the last performance and the finale didn’t change – she still had commanding lead in share – even for that night.

So what happened? We could try to cast dispersions on Idol’s methodology as some have done. But in reality, I don’t think you have to look very far back to learn one thing – the underdog often wins on Idol. Idol voting is not the same thing as voting in an election. You can vote early and often. There is no one viewer – one vote restriction. Thus, fans of the perceived underdog have the ability to outvote fans of the favorite. Going into the final vote, underdog fans know this and are more motivated to place multiple votes for their performer while fans of the favorite are less likely to vote multiple times.  Or so the theory goes…

In the end, SoV measures for Idol (and shows like Idol) might be contra-predictive. In fact, using the same SoV measure, Adam Lambert should have won last season. Perhaps, the model going forward is to pick the underdog. Or, perhaps, buzz (SoV) doesn’t equate to votes on American Idol.

Either way, we’ll now turn our attention back to predicting politics.

Alchemy’s American Idol Prediction

Using our Share of Voice model that has proven itself in the past, we are predicting that Crystal Bowersox will be crowned the victor of this season’s American Idol finals. The following is a 7 day Share of Voice that show’s Crystal taking a decisive 61% share. Things don’t change  much on a 14 Day Share of Voice with Crystal only dropping to 60%. Either way you look at it, she maintains a commanding 20+ point lead over Lee DeWyze. We will update again tomorrow before the winner is announced but based our model, Crystal will have to stumble badly to lose.

Even Reporters Vacations…

One of the things we watch closely here at Maroon Alchemy is the flow of information through our systems. You have your average news days, your strong User Generated Content chatter days with associated memes branching out and your HOLY COW days! What we normally see for is a sine wave. Fairly constant volume Monday – Friday and a sharp decrease over the weekend.

This is our volume coming from traditional media outlets per day through the first few weeks of December.

Here is our volume starting on 12/21 (Monday) through 8:00pm EST Monday (12/28).

Note this marked drop off during the Christmas holidays. What makes this interesting is that there were two (really 1.5) significant events during this period. The first was reaction to the Senate vote on the Health Care bill. Granted, since the actual vote occurred on 12/24 this is really a half an event. But what is really interesting is the fact that on 12/25 we had a failed attempt to blow up an airliner over American soil. That’s a pretty big HOLY COW story with all sorts of ramifications in terms of traditional media. Yet, you see that the daily volume, particularly on the day of the attempted attack and the following day (Friday – Christmas & Saturday) being well below their normal averages.

If it is any consolation, the rest of us took a vacation as well as the User Generated Content and blogosphere showed the same decrease despite the news events. Looking at the Monday numbers, some of us seem to still be on vacation. Heh!

Sarah on the Rise

What would MaroonAlchemy.com be without another take on Sarah Palin and her new book, Going Rogue? Actually, let’s just look at the cold hard facts and see how Gov. Palin’s numbers have fared over the course of the last 7 months.

As you can see, it was a difficult summer for Gov. Palin’s sentiment numbers – resignation from her Governorship, disputes with David Letterman and a relatively public  disagreement with GOP leadership regarding speaking roles. That being said, everything changed for her with the announcement of her book deal and subsequent book release, tour, and media blitz. She hasn’t dropped below 0 for any significant length of time since September 13th. Lock into 9/13/09 (blue arrow) and look at the number of  observations above 0 pre 9/13 and the number of observations below 0 post 9/13. I’ve included a polynomial trend line (order 5) to illustrate my point. Her sentiment numbers are certainly on the rise and her velocity (volume) numbers over the last week and a half are on par with President Obama. She is still very much relevant (understatement) in the public eye and appears to be gaining momentum.

I’m working on a polarity measurement. To be honest, I am not sure what the results are going to be. You would think that her polarity score would be on the rise but remember, most of the controversial disclosures in Going Rogue is directed a McCain campaign staff, most notably Steve Schmidt. I wouldn’t be surprised to see polarity scores indicate that she is less polarizing now than she was four months ago. Stay tuned.