Archives for posts with tag: politics

The two big national stories today have been Pope Benedict XVI’s public event in Washington and the Democratic candidates’ debate in Philadelphia.


TV and cable coverage of the pope has overshadowed almost everything else. But looking at Google Trends, it appears the debate is the more popular topic nationwide.

Tonight’s hotly anticipated faceoff between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama airs on ABC at 8 p.m. ET. The local station will have a live webcast of the debate and a chatroom going. CBS 3 will also host a chatroom. ABC News will have a live blog. If NBC and Fox are planning to do more than post stories and video, they’re not making it obvious.

Sites driven by newspaper content are live blogging. This includes Philly.com, the very funny Philadelphia Will Do blog on Philadelphia Weekly, and possibly The Triangle, the Drexel University student newspaper.

But the most interesting discussions will likely be the ones outside the media spotlight. There are chatrooms on Webchattr and Culturekitchen, and of course, there’s the tweet stream.

Let tonight’s battle royale begin!

You’ve probably been blocking it, but elections are about three weeks away.

Pollingreport.com has been keeping an updated list of national polls, including the most recent Newsweek Iowa poll, which show Mike Huckabee and Barack Obama leading the GOP and Democratic hopefuls, respectively.

The primary dates have been shifting around quite a bit, making this election particularly confusing for the public. Though the Federal Election Commission has a chart, several news outlets have come up with better ways to display the information — and the implications of the votes.

The Washington Post created an interesting bar graph that shows the ripple effect of the earlier primary dates, as well as a national map of the primaries by state and by date.

The Los Angeles Times does their take on the national map with a more elegant timeline of votes and caucuses. The design reminds me a bit of the FEC’s presidential campaign finance map.

Pollster has a plot graph, that tracks the candidate’s poll ratings. There’s a lot of data on each graph, though, so it’s a bit messy.

Rather than tracking, the New York Times does some explaining, with a map highlighting the early states, and a date and map chart of the Democratic and Republican races.

PBS’ Online News Hour and NPR have produced an interactive map that displays data state by state using mouseovers. Click on each state and you get additional information and related stories.