Not if it's a blog. They are indexed almost instantly.
True - to an extent, especially if it is a blogspot.com, or other affiliated service, which Google either owns, or has advertising agreements.
Have a look at Google vs Yahoo on SE call {victoria "Municipal Elections"}
As election news is so predominant (US not local, but the search algorithms apply) - any keywords associated with election news, and any software, or Bboard, that has active discussions on the topic (with appropriate keywords), will play higher - hence VV doing better than most on those search terms.