Lew Rockwell Just Convinced Me Paul Has A Serious Chance of 1st Place in Iowa

Ron Paul is gonna walk away with IA tomorrow. Get some sleep tonight cuz you're going to be partying tomorrow night!
 
I think the article is misleading, because we probably have the "best" donor to voter ratio.

The worst 32:1 (voters to donors) means that for every 32 voters, 1 was a donor.

More of the people that will vote for Ron are likely to have been be a donor (Nov 5th, Tea Party, etc). So Ron might have a 10:1 voter to donor ratio. So for every 10 voters, 1 has donated. So multiple that (10) by the 1,200 donors and you get 12,000 votes. Not as exciting...

But I hope he has a "bad" voter to donor ratio, in which case he will clean house. However, I think his voters are enthusiastic donors too....

You are backwards on your math. A higher voter/donor ratio means more votes per donation collected. We want a high ratio to win, but we can easily win with a relatively low one, like Kucinich had.
 
Being a college student, I know many RP supporters that cannot afford to donate. The campaign claims that there are many young followers, which would mean that many do not have adequate funds to donate. Additionally, has there ever been a candidate that has had more donors that have maxed out than RP? I find maxed-out donors everywhere, which would mean that there aren't as many supporters donating, but rather small amounts of supporters donating LARGE, LARGE amounts. RP supporters are known for their energy, but instead of donating, some sign-wave, create videos, etc.....
 
I will try to explain the voter:donor ratio in simple terms people can easily understand. Lets say Ron Paul gets 20,000 votes in the caucus out of a total of 100,000. That would mean he won 20% of the vote. To calculate his voter:donor ratio, you would take the 20,000 votes and divide by the number of donations he received in that state. Ron received donations of approximately 1200 people which is a significant number. Therefore this hypothetical ratio would be 16.66 votes for every single donation.

What they did here was look back in history to determine how other candidates did in 2004. They compared all the candidates vote totals vs. their donations. A larger voter/donor ratio is always better. But lets assume for the moment Ron Paul has the worst ratio compared to 2004, Dennis Kucinich. If Ron Paul gets that ratio or better, he wins. He would have to have the worst voter donor ratio of any candidate to lose.

thanks that makes a lot more sense.

But I'm not a fan of the "worst Ratio" comparison. I think RP voters would have a better ratio, not the worst.

Very few voted for Dennis and many fewer donated, but what if RP is the opposite.

The few that voted are close in ratio to the few that donated? That throws off the calculation completely.
 
Being a college student, I know many RP supporters that cannot afford to donate. The campaign claims that there are many young followers, which would mean that many do not have adequate funds to donate. Additionally, has there ever been a candidate that has had more donors that have maxed out than RP? I find maxed-out donors everywhere, which would mean that there aren't as many supporters donating, but rather small amounts of supporters donating LARGE, LARGE amounts. RP supporters are known for their energy, but instead of donating, some sign-wave, create videos, etc.....

That's simply not the case. We have 1200 individual donations from Iowa. That's way more than Kucinich's 50 or 60 he had in 2004. We could potentially blow this thing out of the water if we have a voter:donor ratio equal to Kucinich.
 
i think the key to getting good results in Iowa will be how many people that are going to vote for Ron Paul are going to convince other close to them (family, friends...etc) to go with them physically. Since Paul's supporter are extremley motivated I think they will bring people along with them when they go to vote. I live in Calif. and thats my situation. I have 3 people that already said they will vote for Paul if I give them a ride and these 3 people dont really pay attention to whats going on, less give money to Paul.

so lets say Paul's voter to donor ratio is really low in Iowa like 10:1. For every one donor there are 10 people that's going to vote for him. Seems from that article about 1200 people donated money from Iowa.

so 10 multiplied by 1200 is 12,000. If I'm right and in average every paul supporter brings just 1 person to caucus with them that will give Paul about 24,000 votes. Thats would bring him 30% of the votes if 80,000 vote in Iowa or 24% if 100,000 people vote. Not bad.
 
1200 donors with a 32:1 voter-doner ratio yields 38400 votes. Is that what he is saying is needed for a "hands down" victory?

That doesn't seem to mesh with his numbers in the first paragraph that show a 22:1 ratio yielding 80000 votes.

Am I missing something?

The 22:1 - 80,000 and 28:1 - 100,000 is showing the spread depending on how many people might show up, in order to get a top 3 spot.

22=votes per single donation X 1200 Iowa Donations = 26400 total votes.
 
i think we have gained a lot of attention in last short while from meet the press on , notwithstanding , very recent campaign and grassroot ads ... i'm optimistic ... i do worry about corruption and cheating however ... we need watchers , video and spot / exit polling

kill the banks
 
I'll speak for myself. I have not donated a dime, basically cause I'm broke at the moment. However that hasn't stopped me from campaigning, or will stop me from voting. I know a few people in similar situations here in the Mountain state, folks who didn't donate, but fully plan on voting. Perhaps these kind of voters could shift the votes in Dr. Paul's favor.
 
I hope in Iowas meetups and such are telling the supporters to bring family member or friends to vote for Paul when they go caucus. Most people are willing to go if they're not going alone and have a ride. This would make a huge difference in RP's numbers
 
I didn't/couldn't donate, but I will march through hell to vote for Dr. Paul in the Illinois primary.
 
Important

can anyone work out how many donors we had from Iowa prior to the Ames straw poll in August? we might be able to use that ratio to votes as a predictor?!
 
WARNING- ANECDOTAL EVIDENCE BELOW

I know about 15 people who will be voting Paul in the Illinois primaries.

NONE of them go to meetup groups, visit this forum, or have participated in any moneybombs. I'm the only out of that 15 who has donated (never done rallys/meetups)

This tells me that the grasssroots that people are seeing (signs on the street/moneybombs) are just the TIP OF THE ICEBERG.

My honest opinion is that Ron Paul's voter/donor is 18-1, or somewhere close to that.
 
The voter to donor ratio better be greater than 10:1. Come hell or high water, I will be guaranteeing at least 40 votes, whether it be family, friends, colleagues, or canvassing. Although I do agree that our donor ratio will be lower than most, I think that Lew is on to something. I think that a lot of new faces will be out tomorrow night for us.
 
Last edited:
I'll speak for myself. I have not donated a dime, basically cause I'm broke at the moment. However that hasn't stopped me from campaigning, or will stop me from voting. I know a few people in similar situations here in the Mountain state, folks who didn't donate, but fully plan on voting. Perhaps these kind of voters could shift the votes in Dr. Paul's favor.

just a guess but i suspect many younger voters may well fall in this category ie broke and at school ... get them out to vote esp in NH

kill the banks
 
The author of this Lew Rockwell article didn't take into account that Democratic (Kucinich) caucuses are different than Republican caucuses in Iowa.


Iowa caucuses are run not by the government, but rather by the state Democratic and Republican Parties.

While the Republican caucuses are fairly simple - voters can leave shortly after they declare their preferences - Democratic caucuses can require more time and multiple candidate preferences from participants. They do not conform to the one-person, one-vote rule, because votes are weighted according to a precinct's past level of participation. Ties can be settled by coin toss or picking names out of a hat.


Can anyone review if and how this issue affects the donor:voter ratios ? Its seems the ratios for Dems would be much lower than Republicans due to fewer "precinct votes" (dems) than individual (Rep) votes.
 
There WILL be "technical glitches" tommorrow which will leave Ron Paul off the ballot in some precincts etc..guaranteed that the fix is somewhat in....as much as they could anyway.
 
Back
Top