Blog For Arizona

Grassroots Bush?!?

Election Is Now for Bush Campaign

WaPo outlines some features of the Bush re-election campaign. A key figure, topping their story, is that Bush has a database of 6 million emails, 10 times the size of Dean's.

I think this is, at best, a mischaracterization, or simply a lie. If the Bush Administration did NOT have voter lists, including email, of millions of likely voters, I would be amazed. But that is not the same thing as a cleaned and ongoing contact list of self-registered supporters and donors, which is what Dean has. Even the most marginal spammer has lists of millions of valid email addresses, many of which are even accredited leads, but that doesn't mean they are going to win the Presidency on the strength of their power to spam.

I contend it is, in fact, impossible for the Bush campaign to have a database of 6 million supporters equivalent the quality and value of Dean's 600K. In order for Bush to collect those names from voluntary supporters by self-registration, at least substantial portion would have to come via Bush's web site. Some might come from telemarketing or direct mail, but those methods are substantially more expensive, and thus much less likely to be used to generate a supporter list. Establishing a web prescence and then steering supporters to register there has an incremental cost very near to zero, while telemarketing and direct mail has declining per unit cost that never comes near to zero. Thus anyone with any brains, and I credit Bush's campaign advisors with some of those, will use the former method whenever possible in preference to the latter methods.

So, all factors being roughly equal, one would expect that if Bush had collected a list of equivalent quality to Dean's, but 10 times the size, his site would have ten times the traffic. Even if one concedes that Republicans behave radically different than Democrats, registering much more often, while visiting much less often, one might generously determine that Bush's site operates with 10 times the efficiency of Dean's. In which case, the sites of the Dean and Bush campaigns might have equivalent traffic.

They don't. Not hardly. A head-to-head comparison between the sites shows that Dean's site far outstrips Bush's at every point on the graph. Those 6 million names were not collected by GeorgeWBush.com as voluntary registrants, they were mostly purchased wholesale from a vendor. Any spammer will tell you that one tenth of one percent is a good return on even a clean list of proven leads. Being generous and assuming an amazing 10% conversion rate to Bush solicitations to register and/or donate, Bush still only equals Dean's reach.

Even if Bush has what proves to be 600K solid supporter's email, their fundraising power is unproven. Those who are likely to donate and have the money are likely already at their limits. Those who haven't benefited from Bush's economy and are voting against their interests are probably going to free ride on the famous Bush large donors. If the little guy isn't pissed off by getting screwed, why would he dig down to donate?

Mass email lists are likely to be much less effective a fundraising tool for Bush. The "grassroots", aka astroturf, efforts of Bush are much touted by the GOP as their secret weapon, but I think it is likely that at least some of their efforts will accrue to the befit of Dean. The GOP is always advantaged by an apathetic, non-voting, uniformed public; they may be playing with fire trying to raise the roots.

posted by Michael Bryan @ 12/01/2003 07:31:00 PM