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

[angrydragon]

Sadly, 9 out of 10 Ron Paul supporters that I know (well, roughly anyways) have donated.

RP supporters are vocal and pro-active.

Lew has great logic, but I'm not sure how applicable it is. WE NEED TO VOTE, PERIOD.

You are wrong about one thing, Lew didn't write that blog entry, Nick did.

 

[ronpaulfollower999]

Almost all the Ron Paul supporters I know have yet to donate to the campaign.

 

[austin356]

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.

EVERYONE READ THE ABOVE POST. It has a very important incite.

Earlier I thought of this and was thinking it would negatively impact our Nicks calculations and I spread too much negativity on these forums as it is but after doing a little thinking it actually works in our favor since Nick is using Dennis as his control.



This means that the numbers Nick is using are Dennis supporters who actually had their vote count, aka they were in a Precinct where Dennis reached 15% (very very few). This completely throws off the calculation, but in a prudent manner (underestimated rather than over)

A more accurate measure would be to take Dean's voter to donor ratio and use that. Divide by however many times you think Ron Paul supporters were more likely to donate than dean supporters and there you go.

Someone find how many unique donors Dean had and how many votes he received.



My Conclusion:

Positive: Nick's comparision to Dennis is faulty due to differences in the democratic and republican caucus procedures. He underestimates (vastly) Dennis' voter to donor ratio.

Negative (personal judgment not analytical analysis; separate from the above): I think our supporters are soo dedicated that they are much more likely to donate. We will have a record low voter to donor ratio.

Does anyone have a comment on this? If I am not mistaken in this analysis it radically shift the way the numbers work. (in our favor).

 

[jdmetz]

His analysis has a horrible flaw - he got the 2004 numbers from OpenSecrets.com, which only lists donations of $200 or more. So, to get comparable numbers, we need the number of Iowans who donated at least $200 to Ron Paul so far this cycle. The 1200 number is an estimate of the number of Iowans who made any donation.

 

[Hangly Man]

the worst ratio compared to 2004, Dennis Kucinich.

Poor hippies don't have any money

I kid, I kid. Kucinich is a good guy.

 

[austin356]

His analysis has a horrible flaw - he got the 2004 numbers from OpenSecrets.com, which only lists donations of $200 or more. So, to get comparable numbers, we need the number of Iowans who donated at least $200 to Ron Paul so far this cycle. The 1200 number is an estimate of the number of Iowans who made any donation.

Ok there is another hole in the analysis.


Will someone just find Dean's Iowa vote totals and total number of donors? We can put these problems to rest and come up with a much much more accurate picture.

 

[LBT]

I would bet that Ron Paul has the highest donator:voter ratio of any of the candidates. This is likely to be proportional to the level of passion of his average supporter, which we have seen time and time again is higher than for other candidates.

I expect a ratio of around 1:15. I just hope it is better. Maybe all the grassroots efforts there can drag in a lot of on the edge / newish supporters.

 

[AceNZ]

One issue here is that the number of donors reported on opensecrets.org only includes those who gave more than $200, which means that the counts are under-reported to some degree, and that they aren't directly comparable to the numbers reported on ronpaulgraph.com and similar sites.

While it's tempting to believe the conclusions in the original blog post, I think they are on mathematically shaky ground....

 

[richk]

I would bet that Ron Paul has the highest donator:voter ratio of any of the candidates. This is likely to be proportional to the level of passion of his average supporter, which we have seen time and time again is higher than for other candidates.

I expect a ratio of around 15:1. I just hope it is more. Maybe all the grassroots efforts there can drag in a lot of on the edge / newish supporters.

Yeah, it has to be the worst. It's a double-edged sword: It's great to be able to raise $6 million in 24 hrs, but that by obvious deduction will make the ratio of voters/donors small. We can only hope by raising alot of money we will have increased awareness and therefore increased the voter base.

But I would guess our ratio is probably the worst (best) ever in political history. Nobody has supporters like us; we're the best.

A huge victory in Iowa, though, could bring out the "herd" voters and catapult us to victory.

Iowans, time to kick ass!!

 

[paulitics]

Only 1200 donors in the state of Iowa seems low to me. I think it is much higher than this, but I could be wrong.

 

[maxmerkel]

One issue here is that the number of donors reported on opensecrets.org only includes those who gave more than $200, which means that the counts are under-reported to some degree, and that they aren't directly comparable to the numbers reported on ronpaulgraph.com and similar sites.

While it's tempting to believe the conclusions in the original blog post, I think they are on mathematically shaky ground....

+100 for sanity

@others: remember the iowa straw poll and dont get carried away

 

[AlexMerced]

it the open secrets information implies that the number we need for Ron Paul donators should be smaller

If this is the case, the fct remain 1200 individual donated, so reducing the number would increase our ration

the more I think about it, the more this argument doesn't add up

but I still think 1st is within the far reaches of possible

 

[austin356]

One issue here is that the number of donors reported on opensecrets.org only includes those who gave more than $200, which means that the counts are under-reported to some degree, and that they aren't directly comparable to the numbers reported on ronpaulgraph.com and similar sites.

While it's tempting to believe the conclusions in the original blog post, I think they are on mathematically shaky ground....

100% true. Though there are other factors that work in the opposite direction.

 

[austin356]

Only 1200 donors in the state of Iowa seems low to me. I think it is much higher than this, but I could be wrong.

its not really low at all. It is around the national average since Iowa since Iowa makes up around 1% of the population and 1,200 donors is about 1% of the national number of donors.



....................

After reviewing the numbers some more I believe using Dennis as a control for the ratio throws things completely out of whack and even using Dean will through things out of whack.

Because of the differences in Democratic and Republican caucus procedures that leaves only Edwards and Kerry as viable comparisons. And then you still have to radically adjust downward for Paul b/c his base is soo much more likely to donate in small amounts than the two viable comparisons.

EDIT: Hell after checking out the numbers for Kerry and Edwards, comparisons to Paul fall through even more b/c of the differences in both the style of those campaigns (compared to paul's) and their lack of fundraising.


.....................

I have no absolute statistical basis for this (b/c the numbers just are not available) but I think around 25,000 people voted for Dean in Iowa as their first choice. (he ended up getting around 20k as final choice after the viability threshold). I know Dean also had 200,000 donors nationally. If Iowans donated to the Dean campaign at the national rate that would mean just below 2,000 donors. I think considering how he raised his money and from who he raised his money it was lower in Iowa than nationally. I am assuming he had 1500 Iowan Donors. That would give him a ratio of around 15:1.

Using these assumptions Paul comes out with 18,000 votes. A solid 3rd place. And it turns out essentially the same number of votes I would have come to with a personal guestimation.

 

[austin356]

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[pinkmandy]

Cheer up! I'm on a mommy board and the other day a woman posted that she would be going to caucus in IA for RP- as would her husband and 6 friends they know. She has never donated nor have they. They have not gotten involved at any level- they just started doing their own research on the web. She never, ever mentioned liking RP before. I had NO idea and I post RP stuff there everyday (since spring!). She was a "silent supporter" and it's odd because I've converted quite a few people- she has never joined in one of our conversations. I totally had her pegged as a Huck supporter.

So no, not all supporters are vocal and involved. I just joined here myself- though I have donated on both money bombs and 2 other times in the beginning and am in the meetup.

 

[TruckinMike]

I think more of our voters fall in the donor category so our ratio would be the lowest.

Exactly. Our ratio will be very small. But hucks will be high. Therefore we can't expect victory based on that theory.

TM

 

[pinkmandy]

I also agree that there are a lot of people who are strapped for cash (the economy sucks!) and are instead working to support Dr. Paul. I'm sure we've all met them...