Fletcher Christensen left a short diary before heading out that may contain actual news. I'd like to expand on it here with some additional research that supports his nugget of info suggesting Rob Portman of Ohio may be the VP choice for Mitt Romney.
Details under the doodle.
The basis for this is patterns of editing at Wikipedia. Christensen linked to this analysis by Micah Sifry at TechPresident which explains what happened in 2008 regarding VP choices:
Sarah Palin's Wikipedia page was updated at least 68 times the day before John McCain announced her selection, with another 54 changes made in the five previous days previous. Tim Pawlenty, another leading contender for McCain's favor, had 54 edits on August 28th, with just 12 in the five previous days. By contrast, the other likely picks — Romney, Kay Bailey Hutchison — saw far fewer changes. The same burst of last-minute editing appeared on Joe Biden's Wikipedia page..
In the last week none of the GOP VP contender's pages have been heavily edited. Paul Ryan and Marco Rubio have seen the most with 10 and 9 edits respectively according to Sifry.
But today a different story. I counted each at 2 p.m. eastern and found this many edit for today (Tuesday):
Paul Ryan: 3
Marco Rubio: 16
Kelly Ayotte: 0
Chris Christie: 0
Bob McDonnell: 0
Condoleezza Rice: 0
Tim Pawlenty: 4
Rob Portman: 76
That's a lot of edits in one day. And still counting. As commenter Nina Katarina notes about Portman's wiki page in the other diary:
Looking at the edit history, there appears to be a fierce battle between several people over maximising/minimising his ownership of NAFTA.
So, make of this what you will. Where there's smoking font there's fire? Rob Portman as VP? Rubio as the alternate frontrunner? Ohio or Florida as MIP - most important state?