The Google News Candidate Tracker™

Last month, I introduced a completely unscientific gauge on the buzz generated by the Democratic candidates based on the number of hits each gets on a Google News search. The numbers on July 3rd looked like this:

“John Kerry” – 2940
“Howard Dean” – 2890
“John Edwards” – 2190
“Bob Graham” – 2100
“Dick Gephardt” – 1630
“Joe Lieberman” – 1550
“Dennis Kucinich” – 1430
“Al Sharpton” – 1200
“Carol Moseley Braun” – 646

The same search today returns these results:

“Bob Graham” – 4600
“Howard Dean” – 4260
“John Kerry” – 4130
“Dick Gephardt” – 2840
“John Edwards” – 2740
“Dennis Kucinich” – 1930
“Al Sharpton” – 1530
“Carol Moseley Braun” – 936

It looks like Florida Bob benefited from the exposure of some Sunday morning programs, but he also pulls in a lot of articles that read “popularity drops.” Dr. Dean pulls ahead of Senator AWOL; meanwhile Edwards fades from view.