Taegan Goddard's Political Wire

February 04, 2004

More Evidence of a Divided Nation

Valdis Krebs looked at political books on the New York Times Bestseller List and created a "network map" based on purchase patterns from major Internet book retailers. The map clearly shows two distinct clusters emerging -- consisting of "liberal" and "conservative" books -- "with dense internal ties."

Amazingly, the entire network of 67 books "is dependent on just 2 nodes to remain connected -- Sleeping with the Devil and Bush at War." That's not much of a swing vote -- at least among political book buyers.

"So, if you are working a 2004 political campaign what do you do with this information? Obviously you will not be successful in removing a reader from deep in one cluster and transplanting them into the other cluster. All you can do is focus on the edge nodes and the bridges. See someone reading Sleeping with the Devil? That is someone you can talk to about your candidate. If they are reading Bushwacked or Dereliction of Duty -- the most central books in each cluster -- then either give them a high-five or a sneer, you won't change their views."

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Taegan D. Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites.

Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.

Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country, including the Washington Post, USA Today, Boston Globe, San Francisco Chronicle, Chicago Tribune, Philadelphia Inquirer and Christian Science Monitor.

Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.

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