Using our TeCFlow software tool to do coolhunting, I recently checked out the Web buzz on different presidential candidates. The first thing I did was looking at the latest poll results on various US Presidential contenders. Here they are:



As you can see, Hillary Clinton is the clear leader for the Democrats, while Rudi Giuliani and Condolezza Rice are tied for the Republicans. 

Using TeCFlow to do coolhunting, and looking at who talks about whom most on the Web, shows another picture:



The most central people (having the largest squares) are Rudi Giuliani, and surprisingly, John Edwards and Al Gore. Hillary keeps very quiet, and is not very central on the Web!
At the same time, we see that two Web sites are clear "kingmakers", one of them - not so surprisingly - Wikipedia, and the other - more surprisingly - is www.ovaloffice2008.com. Links from those Web sites greatly boost the centrality of a candidate. In other words, the more back links from one of those Web sites a candidate gets, the more central she or he becomes.