Time for a bit more probing underneath the figures about how big, amazing, awesome and must be copied the Obama 2008 Presidential campaign was. (See in particular my previous post about his fundraising.)
New figures which have seeped out this month from a confidential report by Catalist, one of the big data and technology suppliers to Democrat campaigns, show that 49 million adults were contacted more than 127 million times.
So far, so big.
But let’s put that in a UK money. Pro rata, it is equivalent to around 13,000 people per Westminster constituency being contacted an average of 2.5 times. That’s pretty good going compared to what most British constituency campaigns manage, though worth putting in the context of constituency electorates that are usually in the 70,000+ range.
Or put the figures in the US context. Obama polled just under 70 million votes, with around 131 million votes cast and an eligible adult population of around 210 million. So contacting 49 million adults was equivalent to under a quarter of the eligible adult population or 70% of the votes actually cast for the Obama/Biden ticket.
So pick your numbers, take your places and argue as you choose: either the glass is half empty (‘What? Biggest grassroots movement ever and less than a quarter of voters contacted?’) or half full (‘Wow! We’re lucky if we end a general election campaign with a few thousand contacts, let alone averaging 13,000 across the whole country.’)
The lessons I’d draw are two-fold. First, the volume of campaigning that can be done if a campaign is heavily focused on recruiting, motivating and training people to be active in their communities. Second, that even the biggest of campaigns get to only a section of the electorate – which makes targeting (both geographically and by other criteria) to get the most out of that activity vital.
Hat-tip for Obama contact data: NetPulse email newsletter
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5 Comments
Was a contact a phone call/personal visit or did it include literature?
Hywel: I don’t think so. Literature seems to usually have a very different role in US election campaigns, where it is mostly either paid for direct mail etc or hand out leaflets in high visibility locations. The sort of door-to-door leafleting that is the staple of UK campaigns is largely absent from most American ones, possibly in part because of less dense population in the US plus the rules about not being able to put leaflets in letterboxes. Door hangers get used a bit, but often just for the final GOTV drive.
Hi Mark,
Interesting analysis. I saw that Catalist data too, and one additional thing in there that you don’t mention here but that may give a different complexion on the overall numbers is some data that suggested the voters contacted may have been a bit better targetted than previously. In other words, that the ratio of unpersuadables or confirmed non-voters was a bit smaller compared to persuadables and gettable voters who were still classes as unlikely to vote.
If that’s true than the overall numbers look a bit better since after all there are some people we specifically DIDN’T want to be targetting.
So I think the main lesson is no different than any other election – know exactly who you need to reachc and reach them.
PS: On literature – Mark’s right, leafletting wasn’t a bit part of the effort. We were aiming for personal contacts wherever possible.
It’s always worth remembering that people talk to each other, too. So 49 million ‘contacts’ by a campaign is probably a lot more than 49 million people being, as it were, ‘touched’ by the campaign.