Google News Democratic Primary Poll for 1/16/2004

		This Week (1/16)			Last Week (1/9)
1	Howard Dean	11000	22.5%	-3.8	1	9700	25.9%
2	John Kerry	7440	15.2%	+1.0	2	5270	14.1%
4	John Edwards	6990	14.3%	+3.0	4	3940	10.5%
3	Wesley Clark	6370	13.0%	-0.3	3	5070	13.5%
6	Dick Gephardt	5880	12.0%	+1.2	6	4040	10.8%
5	Joe Lieberman	4860	9.9%	-1.2	5	4580	12.2%
7	Dennis Kucinich	3280	6.7%	+1.4	7	1910	5.1%
8	Al Sharpton	3030	6.2%	+1.9	8	1910	5.1%

This week sees several major shifts in the poll. First of all, Carol Mosley Braun is out so everyone's shares received a boost. Second, the increased media attention on Iowa appears to have impacted the shares of those candidates who are not participating in that contest (Clark and Lieberman). Clark may be coming on like gangbusters in the New Hampshire polls, but, so far, that has not translated into increased media attention.

Finally, Dean's commanding lead has dropped. This appears to be more because of an increased media focus on the other candidates since Dean's overall story numbers have not dropped. It may just be that, in the weeks leading up to the Iowa caucuses, the media just spent an inordinate amount of time talking about the Dean phenom and are only now switching back to talking about the race as a whole. In other words, the race has finally begun (what have we been doing for the last year?)

Next week we will learn how the results of the caucus impact media coverage.

The following is a chart of the Google News Media Share over the last few months:

(Methodology: All numbers are taken from the hit counts when searching on the Google News Service for news stories containing each candidate's name. Click on each name to rerun the search. You will get different results as the numbers are constantly changing. I make absolutely no claim that these numbers have any real meaning.)