Blog analysis predicted Iowa; something happened in NH

I don't know exactly how kos predicted the results of the Iowa caucuses. Maybe it was Bushgut, maybe Jupiter was aligned with Mars, or maybe he is just ubersmart. I suppose there may be pollsters who got it pretty close. But there are also now professional blog-sentiment-miners who seem to have a pretty good replica of kos' neural programming. They spot and analyze posts and take into account the poster's track record...if you have read "The Tipping Point" you will recognize the term "mavens."  

So these people atCollective Intellect somehow grab all these blog posts and put it through their sausage grinder (along with the appropriate spices) and out comes a score, which seems to be very closely related to the percentages of the total vote.

Their results in NH emphasize the point that something strange seems to have happened there, perhaps very late in the game. Bradley effect? Tearjerk effect? Big Dog effect? old ladies liberated by good weather? whatever it was, it was not there until the last few days.

I am going to keep an eye on these guys at Collective Intellect and see what they come up with for the next few primaries. (They mostly do work for corporations who need feedback on their products, corporate image, and the like.)

What you blog matters in more ways than you think, especially if you tend to blog intelligently.

disclosure: I was tipped to this by a family member associated with Collective Intellect.