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Alabama Politics Tweets of the Week – March 7, 2010

By TWAY Kris

It’s time for the second edition of “Alabama Politics Tweets of the Week”.  Thanks so much to everyone for their enthusiastic response to our first go at this new feature, and I need your help.  If you see a tweet worthy of “Tweets of the Week”, just copy and paste in the SMS box in the right sidebar and I’ll be sure to consider it.

This week, State Sen. (and candidate for Lt. Governor) Hank Erwin (@Erwin4LtGov2010) was the talk of Twitter, not just for what he tweeted, but by what he said on the floor of the Senate, that was logged by others.  The tweet of the week, hands down, came from @AlabamaPolitics referring to remarks made by Senator Erwin during the debate over bingo on the Senate floor this week:

Erwin: You might as well put a strobe light in your bathroom and start throwing money down the toilet.

No one is quite sure what that means, but many folks had a good time with the concept this week.

For someone who engages in much spin about the importance of the Bible and his interpretation of God, the good senator didn’t seem to have a problem with throwing around some outright gossip this week:

Rumor mill Montgomery. Are Lowell Barron & Randy Owen partners in one of the proposed gambling sites? Hummm.

And finally we have a failure of history, with the good senator repeatedly referencing the Alamo, during the battle over bingo.  He seemed to imply that in his analogy, the defenders of the status quo were the defenders of the Alamo.

Senate now in recess until 2pm. That’s good. Our Alamo defenses are holding strong.

He does realize who ultimately won that battle right?

There was lots of other interesting information flowing on Twitter this week, but I’ll leave you with a tweet from State Senator Scott Beason (@ScottBeason) yesterday (sorry to seem to be picking on Republican senators this week, it is not my intent to be partisan, just entertaining and informative, two of the three tweets above were suggested by Republican friends of mine),

A teacher just told me they cannot ask the children to sit “Indian style”. It’s now “criss cross apple sauce”. My head is going to explode!

With all the craziness we have going on with bingo and the governor’s race, among other things, THAT is what makes his head explode?  a) I want to meet this teacher who says they CAN’T ask children to sit “Indian Style”, is this a regulation none of the rest of us are aware of?  I would bet the truth is much more benign.  What I suspect is really going on is you have a new generation of kids who were raised using this terminology as opposed to what we grew up on.  “Criss-cross applesauce, hands in your lap”, is a commonly used mantra in pre-schools to ensure discipline and classroom order.  Is it possible that “Hey, let’s all sit Indian Style” just doesn’t have the same appeal as it once did and teachers are being encouraged to use the terminology that their students are familar with and this isn’t some sign of the end times that should cause our heads to explode?

FYI, it’s also called the Lotus position in yoga…NAMASTE

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Your comments are welcome below.

 

March 7th, 2010 | Tags: , | Category: Alabama, Politics | One comment

Campaign Ad-apolooza – Byrne, Davis, Bentley, Ivey

By TWAY Kris

Robert Bentley is up with his first campaign ad:

This video was embedded using the YouTuber plugin by Roy Tanck. Adobe Flash Player is required to view the video.

Artur Davis’s first ad is called “Alabama First:

This video was embedded using the YouTuber plugin by Roy Tanck. Adobe Flash Player is required to view the video.

Kay Ivey has this:

Kay Ivey Video from Kay Ivey on Vimeo.

 

And, finally, Bradley Byrne’s latest, focused on jobs:

This video was embedded using the YouTuber plugin by Roy Tanck. Adobe Flash Player is required to view the video.

 

 

March 7th, 2010 | Tags: , , , , | Category: Alabama, Politics | 2 comments

Latest Social Media Poll Results and Updating the Twitter Scorecard

By TWAY Kris

The latest TWAY poll results are in.  This time, the question we asked was “Which gubernatorial candidate is running the most effective online campaign?”  Our completely unscientific (but still interesting) results are:

Bradley Byrne 33%

Artur Davis 28%

Tim James 20%

Bill Johnson 9%

Ron Sparks 6%

Roy Moore 2%

Robert Bentley 1%

Kay Ivey 1%

James Potts <1%

I also wanted to check-in once again with some objective numbers (and subjective analysis) on the use of social media by the candidates for Alabama governor.  Let’s look at the number of Facebook “fans”, Twitter “followers” and You Tube “subscribers”.

candidatefacebookfanstwitterfollowersyoutubesubscribers
Artur Davis11423310936
Bradley Byrne404910958
Tim James323612659
Roy Moore6659609239
Ron Sparks16174685
Robert Bentley9728958
Bill Johnson13209793
Kay Ivey1994731

We last visited the usage of Twitter by candidates in December.  While the number of pieces of information flowing on Twitter have changed quite dramatically, there is still a key piece of what social media is all about missing, interaction.  While there is now much interaction between surrogates (including campaign staff) and the general public, there is still very little to no interaction from the candidates themselves.  We receive assurances that most if not all of the candidates are now producing their own tweets (which I still find suspect), but few questions are being answered or posed from those accounts.

As I did in December, I looked at the results from Twitalyzer, which is an application that provides a way to score your impact in the Twitter universe.  Here is how the candidates shake out (with their December scores in parentheses):

@ArturDavis: 3.4 (1.8)

@Bradley Byrne: 1.6 (1.4)

@TimJames2010: 1.5 (0.9)

@Moore2010: 1.5 (0)

@Bentley2010: 0.9 (0.1)

@TeamJohnson2010: 0.5 (0.9)

@KayIvey: 0.4 (0.5)

@RonSparks2010: 0.3 (0.2)

Congressman Davis continues to expand his lead over the field by this measure, almost doubling his score from December.  Roy Moore made the next biggest move, followed by Rep. Bentley, then Tim James and Bill Johnson.  Kay Ivey and Ron Sparks actually regressed since December.  From my own experience with following these accounts, I once again believe this objective measure to coincide with my subjective opinion of what is happening.  I am impressed with the engagement of the James campaign on social media, and their use of it in getting out their message.  I still believe Davis’s apparatus has been superior, but the gap is closing.

March 6th, 2010 | Tags: , , , , , , , , | Category: Politics | 7 comments

Bright Going to be Tougher to Unseat than Some Believed

By TWAY Kris

Rep. Bobby Bright released some polling numbers to the Montgomery Advertiser that appeared in today’s edition.  The numbers are from respected pollster John Anzalone, and he does offer caveats about what they mean, acknowledging the low name ID for Bright’s opponents and how far from election day we are.  Still, there is a lot of positive here for Rep. Bright.  His favorability rating is 68% for a Democrat sitting in a Republican-leaning district, that is pretty amazing, but given the current political climate it is darn near incredible.  His job approval also stands at almost 70% and his disapproval rating is only 25%.  If he can keep his numbers at those levels, he is going to be extremely tough to beat.  People don’t generally vote out a congressman they think is doing a good job, no matter who the opponent is.  I would expect this poll will cause his opponents to invest heavily in defining Bright as a failure in representing the district and to try to bring these approval numbers down come election day.  Just offering an alternative is not going to be good enough.

The head-to-head match-ups with announced and potential opponents came out like this:

- Bright leads Montgomery City Councilwoman Martha Roby 54-30 percent

- Bright leads state school board member Stephanie Bell 55-29 percent

- Bright leads Montgomery businessman Rick Barber 58-26 percent

It seems as if the “anyone but Bobby” crowd would be firmly behind any of these opponents, and probably hovers around a quarter of the electorate.  The bad news is, that neither of the two candidates who are already in the race have been able to add much to that camp.  Combine these numbers with Roby’s fundraising numbers and I think the odds of Bright holding onto this seat are quite good, despite many predictions to the contrary from national and local politicos.

Your thoughts are appreciated in the comments below.

UPDATE:  The National Journal Blog, Hotline, also picked up the numbers.

UPDATE 2: Swing State Project seems a bit giddy over the results.

UPDATE 3: Mooncat at Left in Alabama points out it may also serve notice that  the PVI system breaks down in states where one party or the other doesn’t compete in presidential elections.

February 28th, 2010 | Tags: , , , | Category: Politics | 7 comments
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