Top Blogs For The 2006 Elections: Charlie Cook
August 25, 2006 at 10:23 pm
Extreme Mortman is asking famous media this question: Which blogs will be most important for covering and influencing the 2006 mid-term elections? Here’s Charlie Cook, Publisher of The Cook Political Report and a political analyst for National Journal and NBC News:
Which blogs will be most important for covering or influencing the 2006 elections? I have no idea which ones will be most influential, or what others use in covering, I can only speak for myself.
I am more of a dead-tree guy myself, but trying to use the web more. But I have an aversion to reading more than two or three paragraphs on a screen. Call it being over 50.
Where do I get information and insights? First, Jennifer Duffy, our Editor at The Cook Political Report, oversees our Senate and gubernatorial coverage while Amy Walter, our Senior Editor, focuses on the House. While I watch both, they are the real experts in our shop. I used to do it all a million years ago but it works much better to have specialists rather than one person trying to be an expert on everything, the proverbial jack of all trades, master of none. So while I can have my opinions, I listen and defer to them 99 percent of the time.
On a broad level, I read in dead tree form the Washington Post, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times and often, but not every day, USAToday. On the road where I can’t get the Post, I definitely read USA Today and whatever local papers and papers I can pick up in airports while connecting.
In terms of non-web, non-dailies, I obviously read National Journal and Congressional Quarterly, the Rothenberg Political Report and The Polling Report.
Web publications that I read printed out include The Hotline, CongressDaily, the House Race Hotline, CQ Politics, and several others that can’t come to mind as I sit at the O’Hare Bar and Grill at 8:45 at night waiting for a flight.
Every morning I go through First Read and The Note, done by the political units at NBC News and ABC News respectively. At this point I should put a plug in for the MSNBC/National Journal joint political website launching on Sept 7 — hit the politics button on msnbc.com (I am an analyst for NBC News in addition to my Cook Poilitical Report and National Journal hats I wear).
Now getting closer to the actual question, my favorite political sites are politicalarithmetik.blogspot.com and mysterypollster.com for polling analysis. News aggregators I use are Drudge, Realclearpolitics and Taegan Goddard’s politicalwire.
Larry Sabato and David Wasserman down at UVA do a great job with crystalball too.
Now getting to blogs. I look for analysis, more than opinion, trying to find people who have carefully reasoned insights, rather than just some jerk with an opinion. While everyone considers themselves in the former rather than the latter, in my mind they separate fairly clearly. What I look for is unique insight that I might not have thought of, particularly if it makes me rethink my own view. I’d much rather change my opinion and end up on the right side than stubbornly stick to a view that ends up being wrong. Don’t go down with the ship.
In terms of races, I only check in with the blogs once or twice a week, don’t have time to do it any more often than that. Everything I’ve mentioned above totals hundreds of pages of reading each week. On the left, it easier: Daily Kos, MyDD and Swingstateproject all have pretty good discussions of races. There is a lot of cheerleading by various people posting but useful insights can also be found.
I hear that there are good single-state oriented political sites, and I know that Amy and Jennifer use those, but I don’t have time and can’t speak from personal experience.
It’s harder on the right, because while there are plenty of right-of-center political sites, freerepublic.com for example. Not many have conversations about specific contests — redstate.com is the one that stands out. I’ve heard the theory that since the left is out of power, they are more focused on the individual races needed to get back in power. On the right, much more of the conversation is about political topics, but not individual races. That sounds plausible to me. Presumably whenever conservatives lose power, their focus will shift as well.
The bloggers got my attention last summer when they spotted the special election in Ohio’s second district as getting competitive before anyone in DC did. While many political bloggers are wrong far often more than right, they credentialed themselves as worth looking at just because I hate being wrong about anything.
Beyond dead tree publications and the web though is relationships, knowing hundreds of people in the business on both sides, talking off the record with them, working the phones and just keeping an ear on the ground for any insights that can help us be right.
