Tracking Candidate Rick Perry in 2012 News Pattern Radar

This week, candidate Rick Perry continued his strong advance in US national polling. The August 26, 2011 Wall Street Journal Political Diary, under the article of Perry on Top, reported these two polling results:

Gallup: "According to Gallup, Mr. Perry now leads the Republican presidential field with 29% of the vote. Mitt Romney, who was ahead up to this point, has fallen to 17% (he was at 23% in July and 27% in June), while Michele Bachmann has fallen to fourth place with just 10%. Ron Paul, meanwhile, took 13%."

PPP: "They put Mr. Perry at 33%, Mr. Romney at 20%, and Ms. Bachmann at 16%. All other candidates were in single digits."

These polling results correlate well with our 2012 News Pattern Radar that has been tracking candidate Perry among competitors and issues over many months and hundreds of thousands of news/blog articles. This News Radar snapshot tracks the Perry news topic as it danced around the radar periphery for many weeks while Romney led in the polls. Then around the middle of August at the Perry official announcement, the Perry topic vectored into the radar center, as a news pattern that indicated that Perry became more relevant than Romney and the entire 2012 GOP field.

All during this period from June 1st, until August 26, 2011, the core 2012 news patterns of Conservative and Obama were quite consistent, indicating that the 2012 election is emerging as conservative ideas versus Obama. Also consistent were the high relevancies of Economy, Jobs and Spending topics, all highly connected to the Obama topic and the core of the 2012 radar.

If the Romney topic is to displace the Perry topic, and correspondingly regain leadership in the polls, Romney news patterns will need to better connect with Obama and the core topics, as a replacement for the Perry news topic.

See real-time version of 2012 radar at ...  http://www.newspatterns.com/show_radar.php?name=gop2012

News Pattern 2012 Radar Predicts that Candidate Perry Will Soon Lead Presidential Polling

Earlier this week, we made the call that candidate Perry would soon lead the GOP pack in regard to 2012 presidential (primary) polling.  Almost simultaneously with our prediction, a Rasmussen poll announced these results:

GOP Primary: Perry 29%, Romney 18%, Bachmann 13%

These results were a pick-up of 11 % points for Perry; -4 % points for Romney; and -3 % points for Bachmann.

Our 2012 News Radar, also correlates well with the first, second, third, etc. positions of the candidates. 

We made our prediction based on these observable news patterns:

* Perry news topic became the candidate topic closest to 2012 news radar center

* Perry topic was the candidate topic most connected to the Conservative topic in an election where the idea of Conservative is the primary opposing topic against the Obama topic.

* Perry topic displaced other candidate topics that were closer to the radar center (Romney topic)

* Perry topic generated the most and strongest connections among other 2012 candidate and issue topics.


These disruptive patterns have been forming over many weeks, and became dominating at the start of this week, in spite of Perry not participating in Iowa straw-polling, and much of national media buzz being about Bachmann winning the Iowa straw poll.


Chalk another one up to the power of discovering patterns from the swarm intelligence from thousands of news content creators.

See real-time version of 2012 radar at ...  http://www.newspatterns.com/show_radar.php?name=gop2012

Flattened User Context – A Consequence of Powerful Google Search Utilities

In many of my recent meetings, I have pointed out that “Google has flattened the awareness environment of decision makers.” As a start, I intend to convey the idea that decision makers are now getting almost any information they seek by inputting simple keywords into a Google search. While Google delivered information borders on the miraculous, there are consequences.

One of the consequences that must be understood is that powerful search often leads to the stripping of context from a user’s understanding of the search results. Context, as used here, is the “the circumstances in which an event occurs; a setting.” Without context, sought after information is flat. This flat information does not have the personal associations, setting, history or circumstances as information in context.

Think of information in context this way. It was not so long ago that a person would go to a library to seek out information. Along the way to finding target information, the seeker would be exposed to related publications that were not conceived at the onset of the search. The seeker might also be aided by a librarian who could further expand the depth of context about a topic. Even the fact, that the library was local to the seeker, increased the likelihood of useful context. The historical nature of the searching process was inherently rich in context. Today, any person can type a short string of words into a Google search box, even if incorrectly spelled, and Google will return highly relevant and prioritized results for the seeker. Nevertheless, the immediate gratification of instant search results without context will invariably flatten the seeker’s potential for understanding. [In response to the context issue, Google is making great strides to consider the search history or location of a user as clues for improved search results.]

I have many industry experiences that are also indicators of a flatter information world:

• Many of my junior clients do not even know the competitive topics for which they should be monitoring.

• Once individual search alerts are constructed, the vast majority of decision makers do not update the keyword criteria of these searches even though relevant topics are changing and the actual language itself of the topics are changing.

• The “siren song” of confirmation bias inclines users to only search for information that verifies what they already believe.

To further complement Google search results or any information source, News Patterns is creating dynamic “radar sectors” that create useful context around related topics. An example of related topics can be a political campaign, composed of competing candidates and the issues that are defining the election. Another example of related topics is a market environment among competing companies, products, customers, suppliers and technologies. News patterning algorithms first define the likely topics for useful context. Other patterning algorithms define how context is defined and shaped by new information. While other algorithms create visual representations of related topic context in which an information seeker can interact to search for target information as well as to discover information that was not initially the target information. An end benefit of news patterning context, is the extension of powerful Google searches complemented with individual user discovery of the unanticipated, yet important and relevant. The world can indeed be flattened and rounded at the same time.