New Brunswick, NJ, October 28, 2008 - The Keller Fay Group. a market research consultancy specializing in word of mouth, today announced study results indicating that daily discussion regarding the presidential campaign dominates Americans’ conversations, even more than traditional word of mouth “consumer topic” winners like food/dining, media/entertainment, and healthcare.  The prominence of campaign word of mouth is even more apparent in “swing” states, where candidates typically direct more attention and advertising dollars.

Study results include:

• 66% of Americans engaged in at least 1 campaign-related conversation on a daily basis during the week of October 19-26, compared to 54% who talked about food/dining, 48% who talked about media and entertainment, and 39% who talked about healthcare.
• In states described as “solid” or “leaning” toward one candidate or another, 62% of Americans engaged in daily campaign-related conversation vs. 67% of Americans who did so in “swing” states.
• Barack Obama took a clear lead in word of mouth during the entire four-week period of the study; in the final week (10/19-10/26), 59% of Americans engaged in at least one conversation about Mr. Obama on a daily basis, while 52% spoke about John McCain, 45% discussed Sarah Palin, and 27% spoke about Joe Biden.

In addition, following news of the U.S. market crisis, campaign word of mouth spiked, with positive/negative ratio of talk about individual candidates shifting significantly.

• Positive word of mouth regarding Obama increased from 39% to 46%, while positive word of mouth about McCain decreased from 34% to 31%.
• During the last week of the study, Biden experienced a high ratio of positive to negative talk (37% vs. 22%) while Palin experienced the highest proportion of negative to positive talk (39% vs. 35%).
• The largest growth in negative word of mouth regarding McCain coincided with the height of the economic fallout.

“Our findings highlight the significant interest voters are attributing to this presidential race,” says Keller Fay COO Brad Fay, author of the study.  “It tells us just how much the Presidential election has taken over the national conversation when you see that more consumers have engaged in more word of mouth surrounding the presidential candidates, particularly regarding Barack Obama, than about everyday consumer categories.”

The study findings are from TalkTrack(R), the Keller Fay Group’s measurement program for word of mouth marketing that monitors daily conversations of Americans in all channels (online and offline).  Results were culled from online interviews of 2,314 Americans ages 18-69 years old, from October 1-26, 2008.