rp08orbust
Member
- Joined
- Dec 20, 2007
- Messages
- 4,803
I have never been more serious in my life: I firmly believe that a mere $10k stands between us and victory in the Washington caucus straw poll tomorrow. That's how much we estimate that it would take to finish calling the roughly two million phone numbers left on our robopoll list and follow up with text messages and phone calls.
What initially seemed like an easy project to add a few hundred votes for Ron Paul looks like it could add thousands. We've obtained leads to about 12,700 Ron Paul leaners. Combining feedback from multiple call centers (including our own volunteers), about 80% of those confirm their support for Ron Paul in follow-up calls. About 65% of those called say they will attend their caucus and vote for Ron Paul. One call center is asking about delegates, and amazingly, 37% say they intend to seek delegate positions at their caucus. What we find remarkable is that almost no persuasion seems necessary: People appear to be making decisions based on the voice message played to them after voting for Ron Paul in the robopoll and the text message they receive the same day.
If 65% of those 12,700 Ron Paul leaners currently have intentions of caucusing for Ron Paul tomorrow and a mere 20% of them actually do (an estimate we make based on our identical efforts in Washington Co., Maine a couple weeks ago), we're looking at 1,650 votes added to Ron Paul's total so far in a caucus that drew only about 12,000 votes in 2008.
The call centers have done a great job, and these results show how effective use of donations has been. But the truth is, how well Ron Paul does on Saturday will come down to our last-minute Robopoll and Get Out the Vote (GOTV) efforts.
The simple truth is, elections are a number's game. That means turnout is CRITICAL.
If Ron Paul is going to finish strong on Saturday, we must make sure we can ID as many additional supporters as possible and convince them to show up to vote. Click to Donate http://rp2012.org/
Of course, we can't know for certain that none of those 1,650 votes would have been cast for Ron Paul without our efforts, but a statistical argument can be made that very few of them would have. Less than 0.2% of the Washington population voted in the 2008 GOP caucus. Even if that doubles or triples to 0.5% (which I'm a bit skeptical about), that's a tiny sliver of the population. That means perhaps 0.1% of the Washington population is going to caucus for Ron Paul tomorrow. But roughly 10% * 65% = 6.5% of our survey respondents are saying they will caucus for Ron Paul tomorrow, and if 80% of them do not, then we're only down 1.3% of our respondents being Ron Paul voters tomorrow. As tiny as that may seem, it is still way too high to simply be the result of us magically finding that 0.1% sliver of the population who will actually vote for Ron Paul tomorrow. That would be paranormal. Rather, we're concluding that the robopoll itself and the follow-up text messages are persuading people, and follow-up phone calls are solidifying those decisions.
I am a terrible marketer and salesman. If I were better at promoting this, I'm convinced we could have won the Ames straw poll with 10,000 votes using the same techniques I was using then and am using now. Perhaps I should try beginning every sentence with "You see", like John Tate
You see, the bottom line is, the donations you make in the next few hours at http://rp2012.org will determine whether Ron Paul wins the Washington caucus tomorrow.
What initially seemed like an easy project to add a few hundred votes for Ron Paul looks like it could add thousands. We've obtained leads to about 12,700 Ron Paul leaners. Combining feedback from multiple call centers (including our own volunteers), about 80% of those confirm their support for Ron Paul in follow-up calls. About 65% of those called say they will attend their caucus and vote for Ron Paul. One call center is asking about delegates, and amazingly, 37% say they intend to seek delegate positions at their caucus. What we find remarkable is that almost no persuasion seems necessary: People appear to be making decisions based on the voice message played to them after voting for Ron Paul in the robopoll and the text message they receive the same day.
If 65% of those 12,700 Ron Paul leaners currently have intentions of caucusing for Ron Paul tomorrow and a mere 20% of them actually do (an estimate we make based on our identical efforts in Washington Co., Maine a couple weeks ago), we're looking at 1,650 votes added to Ron Paul's total so far in a caucus that drew only about 12,000 votes in 2008.
The call centers have done a great job, and these results show how effective use of donations has been. But the truth is, how well Ron Paul does on Saturday will come down to our last-minute Robopoll and Get Out the Vote (GOTV) efforts.
The simple truth is, elections are a number's game. That means turnout is CRITICAL.
If Ron Paul is going to finish strong on Saturday, we must make sure we can ID as many additional supporters as possible and convince them to show up to vote. Click to Donate http://rp2012.org/
Of course, we can't know for certain that none of those 1,650 votes would have been cast for Ron Paul without our efforts, but a statistical argument can be made that very few of them would have. Less than 0.2% of the Washington population voted in the 2008 GOP caucus. Even if that doubles or triples to 0.5% (which I'm a bit skeptical about), that's a tiny sliver of the population. That means perhaps 0.1% of the Washington population is going to caucus for Ron Paul tomorrow. But roughly 10% * 65% = 6.5% of our survey respondents are saying they will caucus for Ron Paul tomorrow, and if 80% of them do not, then we're only down 1.3% of our respondents being Ron Paul voters tomorrow. As tiny as that may seem, it is still way too high to simply be the result of us magically finding that 0.1% sliver of the population who will actually vote for Ron Paul tomorrow. That would be paranormal. Rather, we're concluding that the robopoll itself and the follow-up text messages are persuading people, and follow-up phone calls are solidifying those decisions.
I am a terrible marketer and salesman. If I were better at promoting this, I'm convinced we could have won the Ames straw poll with 10,000 votes using the same techniques I was using then and am using now. Perhaps I should try beginning every sentence with "You see", like John Tate
You see, the bottom line is, the donations you make in the next few hours at http://rp2012.org will determine whether Ron Paul wins the Washington caucus tomorrow.
Last edited:
