rp08orbust
Member
- Joined
- Dec 20, 2007
- Messages
- 4,803
Why am I helping rp2012.org?
Ron Paul's Iowa campaign team have made it clear that the best way to help Ron Paul win the Ames straw poll right now is to donate to the Iowa projects and volunteer for the campaign's phonebanking among Iowa Republicans. However, whether you like it or not, the grassroots phonebanking project, rp2012.org, which targets Iowa independents, appears determined to continue. Given this, my goal is to make rp2012.org as successful as possible and provide a way for those who have maxed out their donations to the official campaign, but who do not have time to phonebank, to continue supporting Ron Paul's efforts to win the Ames straw poll.
Why robopolling?
First, the purpose of the robopolling is not to measure Ron Paul's support in Iowa. I have deliberately skewed the voter sample to maximize the chances of identifying Iowa independents who support Ron Paul. Rather, the purpose of the robopolling is to do just that: Identify Ron Paul supporters who can be urged to vote in the Ames straw poll.
There are many reasons why I favor robopolling over manual phonebanking for the purpose of identifying Ron Paul supporters.
First, the robopoll messages are completely neutral (if anything, they are biased against Ron Paul by his placement in the list of choices) and, except for my Skype caller ID, they are anonymous, so they do not reflect badly on Ron Paul in any way among Iowa voters. (And yes, the robopoll is legal.)
Second, the robopolling is extremely efficient: With this first poll, I've identified as many Ron Paul supporters as the rp2012.org phonebankers have been identifying in a week or more, and it cost only $100.
Third, by separating the identification of Ron Paul supporters from any Ames straw poll invitations, we can ensure that invitations get handled by the best human callers possible. I'll offer the robopoll results to the official campaign first. They can probably accept the results of robopolls that I paid for myself as personal contributions to the campaign (I am far from maxed out), but I'm expecting any future robopoll results paid for by grassroots donations to be rejected due to campaign finance laws. In that case, rp2012.org folks can have the best callers invite the identified Ron Paul supporters to the straw poll.
Today's Sample
Today I called 2,134 registered Iowa voters who met the following criteria:
1. Registered to vote in Iowa as independent (Non-Partisan).
2. Male
3. Will be younger than 40 years hold on August 13.
4. The phone number provided in the voter database is a cell phone number as determined by phonevalidator.com.
5. Primary ZIP code is 50010, 50012, 50013, 50011, 50201, 50105 or 50014.
All of the ZIP codes are within 9 miles driving distance of the Hilton Coliseum, as determined by zip-codes.com (see http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showth...-by-zip-code&p=3367532&viewfull=1#post3367532). I would normally have a bottom age limit to exclude the flakier end of Ron Paul's younger supporters, but I figure if they live that close to Ames, the teenagers are worth a try.
The question
The exact text of the poll question was as follows:
(The hyphen in Pawlenty's name was necessary to get the TTS system to pronounce his name correctly.) The question was designed so that calls would remain just under 1 minute (CallFire charges in 1 minute increments).
Results
2,134 phone numbers were dialed between 7:30pm and 8:15pm Central time.
1,959 calls were answered, which at $0.05 per minute, cost just under $100.
There were 141 responses to the poll question as follows:
Barack Obama: 52 (37%)
Ron Paul: 26 (18%)
Michele Bachmann: 16 (11%)
Mitt Romney: 9 (6%)
Rick Perry: 5 (4%)
Tim Pawlenty: 4 (3%)
Rick Santorum: 2 (1%)
Herman Cain: 1 (< 1%)
Newt Gingrich: 1 (< 1%)
Other/Undecided: 25 (18%)
So I identified 26 Ron Paul supporters in the Ames area at a rate of about $4 each. Considering that phonebanking is identifying Ron Paul supporters at a rate of about 1 out of 100 manual calls made in about an hour, I consider this very efficient.
Ron Paul's Iowa campaign team have made it clear that the best way to help Ron Paul win the Ames straw poll right now is to donate to the Iowa projects and volunteer for the campaign's phonebanking among Iowa Republicans. However, whether you like it or not, the grassroots phonebanking project, rp2012.org, which targets Iowa independents, appears determined to continue. Given this, my goal is to make rp2012.org as successful as possible and provide a way for those who have maxed out their donations to the official campaign, but who do not have time to phonebank, to continue supporting Ron Paul's efforts to win the Ames straw poll.
Why robopolling?
First, the purpose of the robopolling is not to measure Ron Paul's support in Iowa. I have deliberately skewed the voter sample to maximize the chances of identifying Iowa independents who support Ron Paul. Rather, the purpose of the robopolling is to do just that: Identify Ron Paul supporters who can be urged to vote in the Ames straw poll.
There are many reasons why I favor robopolling over manual phonebanking for the purpose of identifying Ron Paul supporters.
First, the robopoll messages are completely neutral (if anything, they are biased against Ron Paul by his placement in the list of choices) and, except for my Skype caller ID, they are anonymous, so they do not reflect badly on Ron Paul in any way among Iowa voters. (And yes, the robopoll is legal.)
Second, the robopolling is extremely efficient: With this first poll, I've identified as many Ron Paul supporters as the rp2012.org phonebankers have been identifying in a week or more, and it cost only $100.
Third, by separating the identification of Ron Paul supporters from any Ames straw poll invitations, we can ensure that invitations get handled by the best human callers possible. I'll offer the robopoll results to the official campaign first. They can probably accept the results of robopolls that I paid for myself as personal contributions to the campaign (I am far from maxed out), but I'm expecting any future robopoll results paid for by grassroots donations to be rejected due to campaign finance laws. In that case, rp2012.org folks can have the best callers invite the identified Ron Paul supporters to the straw poll.
Today's Sample
Today I called 2,134 registered Iowa voters who met the following criteria:
1. Registered to vote in Iowa as independent (Non-Partisan).
2. Male
3. Will be younger than 40 years hold on August 13.
4. The phone number provided in the voter database is a cell phone number as determined by phonevalidator.com.
5. Primary ZIP code is 50010, 50012, 50013, 50011, 50201, 50105 or 50014.
All of the ZIP codes are within 9 miles driving distance of the Hilton Coliseum, as determined by zip-codes.com (see http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showth...-by-zip-code&p=3367532&viewfull=1#post3367532). I would normally have a bottom age limit to exclude the flakier end of Ron Paul's younger supporters, but I figure if they live that close to Ames, the teenagers are worth a try.
The question
The exact text of the poll question was as follows:
(The hyphen in Pawlenty's name was necessary to get the TTS system to pronounce his name correctly.) The question was designed so that calls would remain just under 1 minute (CallFire charges in 1 minute increments).
Results
2,134 phone numbers were dialed between 7:30pm and 8:15pm Central time.
1,959 calls were answered, which at $0.05 per minute, cost just under $100.
There were 141 responses to the poll question as follows:
Barack Obama: 52 (37%)
Ron Paul: 26 (18%)
Michele Bachmann: 16 (11%)
Mitt Romney: 9 (6%)
Rick Perry: 5 (4%)
Tim Pawlenty: 4 (3%)
Rick Santorum: 2 (1%)
Herman Cain: 1 (< 1%)
Newt Gingrich: 1 (< 1%)
Other/Undecided: 25 (18%)
So I identified 26 Ron Paul supporters in the Ames area at a rate of about $4 each. Considering that phonebanking is identifying Ron Paul supporters at a rate of about 1 out of 100 manual calls made in about an hour, I consider this very efficient.
