Duke on Top by a Hair… Sorta

Last Friday we told you that Butler and Duke were the #1 and #2 teams in terms of chatter share. Sure enough, both Butler and Duke won. We’ve had a lot of questions around how we measure Share of Voice and I thought I would take some time and explain it. What we do is look for all Final Four team specific chatter in the Media and User Generated Content channels. The sum of the team specific observations constitutes the Final Four “voice” and each team’s contribution constitute its share. So in this case, the wisdom of fans was spot on with both Butler and Duke advancing to the finals tonight.

That begs another question – so what does the wisdom of fans say about tonight’s match-up? According to our partner Rasmussen Reports, fans think Duke will win but would rather see Butler cutting down the net.

As for the chatter, over the course of the last 7 days it is Duke, by 1%.

However, if we just look at just today’s chatter we see that Butler is surging ahead as of 2:15pm EDT.

Butler appears to have the fan momentum – let’s see if it translates to a NCAA Finals victory.

*** UPDATE 7:30PM EDT ***

Here’s the last bit of data from today on tonight’s NCAA Finals. Butler has increased its share and has almost a 4% point lead on Duke going into the game.

Butler is the Belle of the Ball

Well, as they say, this weekend is the Big Dance over in Indianapolis, Indiana. That’s right, it is the 2010 NCAA Men’s Basketball Final Four. In conjunction with Rasmussen Reports we’ve been tracking the various schools’ Share of Voice coverage and the numbers show that Butler is the crowd favorite.

2010 NCAA Final Four Share of Voice

Very little love for Michigan State but as someone who has watched these numbers come in, Michigan State has surged a good 1.5% share in the last couple of days. These numbers correspond nicely with Rasmussen’s outbound polling that show 33% rooting for Butler. What interesting is though 33% are rooting for Butler and the team is garnering a 31% share of coverage and chatter, only 13% believe that the 2010 Cinderella team will end up winning the tournament. This disbelief obviously isn’t keeping people from rooting or talking about Butler. However, a similar disbelief may be affecting share for another Midwest school. In our numbers, Michigan State comes in last at a 20% share. This enthusiasm gap also translates to doubts about the team’s ability to win – only 15% of people Rasmussen polled think Michigan State will win the tournament.

For more information, please see Rasmussen’s Final Four coverage.